DUBAI — Qatar, Pakistan and other regional mediators were scrambling again on Friday to pull the US and Iran back from the brink of renewed war and revive peace talks, as days of strikes by the two countries appeared to settle into an uneasy pause.
Qatari negotiators have travelled to Iran to meet officials there in an effort to de-escalate the situation and create conditions for the US-Iran talks to resume, a diplomat with knowledge of the visit told CNN.
The trip was planned in coordination with the United States, the source said.
Qatar, which helped broker the US-Iran truce last month, has been in talks with Washington and Tehran to de-escalate the crisis, according to two officials with knowledge of the matter, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.
In recent days, several countries in the region, including Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan, all of which host US military facilities, said they had come under Iranian attack.
A US official told CNN earlier that the US military was deliberately striking and then pausing to avoid escalation and to let diplomacy work.
The recent strikes have all but shattered the truce and followed a now familiar pattern of hostilities: attacks blamed on Iran against commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, followed by American retaliation, Iranian counterattacks and then a return to fragile stalemate.
Even as the fighting appeared to subside on Friday, it remained unclear whether the latest mediation efforts could prevent that cycle from repeating. It has become a dangerous test of wills, with each side trying to show that it can absorb the other’s attacks and respond forcefully, without tipping the conflict back into full-scale war.
Iran has threatened to expand its attacks to other US military facilities in the region if American attacks continue. Tehran accused US forces of striking railway lines this week in the country’s north, and Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, warned on Friday that “attacks on infrastructure will be met with reciprocal action.”
A day earlier, President Trump said he thought the cease-fire was “over,” even as he suggested that negotiations to reach a lasting settlement would continue.
There were scattered reports overnight from Iranian state media of explosions in southern Iran, but the reports were at times contradictory and often followed by denials. US Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East, had made no announcement of new strikes by Friday morning.
The confusion reflected how much of the region remained on edge, with even fragmentary reports of explosions enough to raise fears that the latest cycle of strikes could widen again.
At the center of the crisis is the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important energy corridors. The United States has accused Iran of targeting commercial vessels in the waterway, while Tehran has insisted that marine traffic adhere to a designated route through Iran’s territorial waters.
The dispute has turned partly on the wording of the truce, which called on Iran to help arrange safe commercial passage through the strait, while leaving unclear exactly how.
The US military said on Thursday that it had struck more than 170 targets in Iran during the previous 48 hours, a significant increase compared with earlier flare-ups during the cease-fire. The strikes were focused on military targets on the Iranian coast and were intended to degrade Iran’s ability to threaten commercial shipping in the strait, the military said.
The two days of attacks, which came during funeral ceremonies for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader killed in US-Israeli strikes on Feb. 28, killed 14 people and injured 78 others, according to Iran’s health ministry, which did not give details about the victims.
After the latest escalation between the US and Iran, two Israeli sources saidthe Trump administration did not want Israel involved in the fighting over concerns of losing control of the conflict.
“(Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu would really want to join the US strikes,” one of the sources said, “but the US doesn’t want Israel involved at the moment.”
On Thursday, Israel’s defense minister said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was ready to resume the war against Iran once again, even if it had to do it alone.
“The IDF is on high alert and prepared to resume the campaign, regain air superiority, and carry out an independent Israeli strike against Iran to eliminate threats — even for a third time,” said Israel Katz at the graduation ceremony for the IDF’s newest pilots. “If we have to return, we will return with even greater force.”
Nevertheless, one of the sources said the prevailing Israeli assessment is that Trump does not want a return to a full-scale war and that the most he may be willing to do is to reinstate the naval blockade on Iranian ports.
Source: Saudi Gazette