As President Donald Trump was departing Washington last week for Florida, ending the war with Iran appeared the last thing on his mind.
“You don’t do a ceasefire when you’re literally obliterating the other side,” he said Friday from the White House South Lawn before getting in his helicopter and flying away.
Three days, one ultimatum and — in his telling — a few conversations with a mystery official in Tehran later, Trump had adopted a different view.
“They want to settle, and we’re going to get it done,” he declared before a crowd in Memphis, Tennessee, on Monday, before touring Elvis’ Graceland.
The sudden turnabout and, according to Trump, rapidly advancing peace talks made for an abrupt shift in the administration’s approach to the war after the president threatened Saturday evening to hit Iran’s power plants if the Strait of Hormuz wasn’t opened in 48 hours.
And now there is an even a proposal for Pakistan to host a meeting between the US and Iran later this week, which Vice President JD Vance could attend, two sources said. CNN has reached out to Vance’s office.
The change in US posture came after warnings from Gulf allies that the striking civilian power sites in Iran could lead to disastrous escalation, according to people familiar with the conversations. And the announcement of talks, made two hours before the open of US trading on Monday, resulted in a rally on Wall Street and a sharp slide in the price of Brent crude — both areas that had been causing heartburn for Trump and his advisers.
Who, exactly, is doing the talking — or even whether they were talking at all — instantly became a matter of dispute. Trump, who refused to name the Iranian interlocutor his envoys were engaging, provided few details beyond describing the official as “respected.” And even as the president was speaking, additional Marine units were heading toward the Middle East, fueling skepticism about how real the talks are.
For its part, Tehran denied any talks and claimed Trump had backed down from his threat because he was afraid of Iranian retaliation.
“No negotiations have been held with the US,” Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who was rumored to be the official Trump was referring to, wrote on X. He said the US’ postponement of power plant strikes was meant to “escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped.”
Still, the denials were carefully worded and did not refute that messages had been passed back and forth testing the waters for a potential resumption of talks.
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