Trump doubles down on Iran threats as US puts more sanctions
Here’s what happened today
We will be closing this live page soon. Here is a recap of the day’s major developments:
President Trump says Iran “wants to make a deal”, but did not elaborate about the chances of securing one.
The US Treasury Department has imposed new sanctions on seven Iranian nationals, including Iran’s interior minister, and one entity.
Turkiye’s FM Hakan Fidan met his Iranian counterpart Araghchi in Istanbul and urged a resumption of nuclear talks between the US and Iran.
Araghchi has said there are currently no meetings or planned contacts with US officials, stressing that conditions for talks have not yet been met.
Iranian authorities say they have arrested an unidentified number of people responsible for destroying public property in recent antigovernment protests in southern Tehran.
‘We’re stumbling towards increased Middle East destablisation’
Alan Eyre, a distinguished diplomatic fellow at the Middle East Institute, believes the US has backed itself into a corner with its “gunboat diplomacy”, increasing the risk of a US-Iran confrontation that has major regional implications.
“I think we’re in a very dangerous situation, and I think we’re stumbling towards increased destabilisation in the Middle East with a military attack on Iran,” said Eyre.
Iran, for its part, has little “strategic deterrence”, he noted. “Its proxy network has been eviscerated by Israel, its missiles – it lost many of them in the 12-day war – and its nuclear programme is destroyed. So right now, Iran is feeling quite