Trump meets with national security officials as he weighs next steps on Iran

President Donald Trump met Friday with top US national security officials as he weighs a path forward on the war with Iran, a person familiar with the meeting said.

The White House session — which Trump holds routinely — came as diplomacy grinds ahead in an attempt to secure a deal to end the war. It ended without a decision on what will happen next.

Meanwhile, delegations from Qatar and Pakistan traveled to Tehran in hopes of ending the conflict, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ismail Baghaei said on Friday, according to Iran’s state news agency IRNA.

Pakistan’s Army Chief Asim Munir and Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met late into the night to discuss “preventing escalation” and ending the conflict, IRNA reported Saturday morning.

Munir met again with Araghchi Saturday, as well as with Iran’s chief negotiator Mohammad Ghalibaf.

According to Iranian state media accounts, Ghalibaf said Iran “will not back down from the rights of our nation and country – especially when dealing with a party that has never shown sincerity and in which no trust exists.”

“We were in the middle of negotiations when America started the war, and now it says let’s negotiate to end it. We were in a ceasefire that you (Munir) mediated, and America violated the agreement by imposing a naval blockade, and now it wants to lift it!” Ghalibaf added.

“If Trump makes the mistake of restarting the war, it will definitely be more crushing and bitter for America than the first day of the war,” Ghalibaf said.

Qatar’s Foreign Minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, told Araghchi on a phone call that Tehran’s use of the Strait of Hormuz as a pressure lever will “yield nothing but a deepening of the current crisis and putting the vital interests of the region’s countries at risk,” according to a Qatari account of the call.

Trump, who has been frustrated at the pace of talks, has been presented with options for restarting military action. He said he was an hour away from ordering up strikes earlier this week, only to hold back at the request of Gulf nations. On Friday, he scuttled plans to travel to his golf resort in New Jersey for the weekend and confirmed he would not be attending his son’s wedding in the Bahamas — opting instead to stay in Washington due to what he said were “circumstances pertaining to Government, and my love for the United States of America.”

“I feel it is important for me to remain in Washington, D.C., at the White House during this important period of time,” he wrote on Truth Social, addressing his expected absence at Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding. Earlier, Trump had said the nuptials were ill-timed, citing, “Everything called Iran and other things.”

Officials in the national security meeting Friday included Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, alluded to a Friday Oval Office meeting during commencement remarks at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis.

How Trump proceeds remains to be seen. Earlier this week, he gave Iran a loose deadline of early next week to return a suitable offer to end the war.

Some officials have projected optimism that talks are proceeding, but so far it’s not clear how any of the sticking points between the two countries will be resolved.

CNN’s Laura Sharman contributed to this report.

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المصدر: Egypt Independent