The US military said Monday that it carried out “self-defence” strikes in southern Iran, including on missile launch sites and boats placing mines, even as President Donald Trump said on social media that negotiations were “proceeding nicely”.
According to a statement from the US Central Command, the strikes were carried out “to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces”, but the military was “using restraint during the ongoing ceasefire”.
Further details were not immediately available, including more specifics on the threats from Iran and what this means for negotiations.
Earlier, Trump said any agreement to end the Iran war should include a requirement for several additional countries, including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, to join the Abraham Accords, the US-brokered agreements from Trump’s first term aimed at normalising relations with Israel.
The proposal came as the emerging Iran deal faced criticism from fellow Republicans who favour a harder line on Iran, and it could add new diplomatic complications to the negotiations.
Trump pointed to Saudi Arabia and Qatar as countries that should “immediately” sign on, alongside Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan. Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates became the first countries to join in 2020.
The proposal came as the emerging Iran deal faced criticism from fellow Republicans who favor a harder line on Iran, and it could add new diplomatic complications to the negotiations.
Trump pointed to Saudi Arabia and Qatar as countries that should “immediately” sign on, alongside Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan. Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates became the first countries to join in 2020.
He wrote that “after all the work done by the United States to try and pull this very complex puzzle together, it should be mandatory that all of these countries, at a minimum, simultaneously sign onto the Abraham Accords.”
Trump has long hoped Saudi Arabia would join, but the kingdom has maintained that any normalisation deal requires first establishing a clear path for Palestinian statehood. That’s also key for Pakistan, which is among the countries that do not have diplomatic relations with Israel.
The accords are a series of diplomatic, economic and security agreements created with U.S. influence during Trump’s first term, originally between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, followed by Sudan, Morocco, and, more recently, Kazakhstan.
They were framed as an effort to promote cooperation among countries in the Middle East and North Africa, and the administration saw them as partly paving a path toward full ties with Israel.