Iran signals halt if US maintains pause in strikes

DUBAI/WASHINGTON: Iran has told the United States it will stop its own attacks as long as Washington continues its current pause in bombing, as both sides went a second straight day without reported strikes.

A senior Iranian official said Tehran's position remained "attack for attack" and that "if the attacks stop, Iran will also halt its operations." The official added that the message had already been conveyed to Washington.

The lull followed 13 nights of intensifying US airstrikes on Iran. The Pentagon suspended the campaign late on Friday, and no US attacks were reported on Saturday or Sunday. Iran, which had been responding to each night of US attacks with strikes on neighbouring countries hosting US bases, also held fire over the same period.

US ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz said President Donald Trump had chosen to pause the attacks to create more room for diplomacy. Waltz told US media, "He's giving talks some space, he's giving it a little bit of room," without offering further details.

Concerns over targets and munitions

Behind the decision, US military officials have raised concerns about both the effectiveness and the cost of continuing the campaign. A US official said the strikes of the past two weeks, launched in response to Iranian attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, had largely used up the pre-selected target sets.

The same official said General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had privately warned Trump that resuming major operations would carry risks because of pressure on munitions stocks, including interceptors used by US air defences in the Middle East. Caine's office and US Central Command declined comment.

Waltz, speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press," said the US military "has everything that it needs," while also saying Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth inherited "a depleted situation" when he took office under the Trump administration.

Scepticism in Tehran

Iranian officials do not appear convinced that the pause marks a real shift in US policy. The senior Iranian official said there was "more scepticism than optimism about the halt in attacks" and described the prevailing view in Tehran as being that the pause was tactical rather than genuine.

For the past two weeks, Washington had said its nightly strikes were retaliation for Iranian attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran, for its part, responded to the US campaign by launching strikes at water desalination plants in nearby Gulf Arab states. Tehran says it wants to retain control of the strait, through which a fifth of global oil flows passed before the war.

The renewed US military campaign also derailed last month's interim agreement aimed at ending the war.

Residents in Iran remain uneasy despite the two-day pause. Nader, a 49-year-old import-export business owner in Tehran, said he doubted the halt would last. He said, "Everyone in the country is stuck in limbo. Trump is playing games with Iran. He neither ends the war and leaves the region nor strikes decisively. It's exhausting."