Iran will halt its own attacks for as long as the United States does the same, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Sunday, as Washington extended a pause in its bombing campaign after President Trump's advisers reportedly warned him they were running out of targets and voiced concern about depleting American weapons stocks.
After 13 nights of intensifying US air strikes on Iran, the Pentagon suspended the campaign late on Friday, with no US attacks reported on either Saturday or Sunday. Iran, which had been matching each night of US strikes with attacks of its own on neighbouring countries hosting American bases, has also held its fire for two days.
The Iranian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tehran's position remains "attack for attack," meaning that if the American attacks stop, Iran will also halt its own operations, and that this message had already been conveyed to Washington.
US ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz told American media on Sunday that Trump had decided to pause the attacks to give diplomacy more room, saying Trump was "giving talks some space," without providing further detail.
US military officials have said in recent days that two weeks of bombing meant to deter Iranian threats to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway that has become a key flashpoint in the war, had largely exhausted the pre-selected target list, according to a US official speaking on condition of anonymity.
Resuming major combat operations remains an option, but General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has privately cautioned Trump that doing so would carry risk given the strain it would place on munitions stocks, including the interceptors used by US air defences in the Middle East, the official said. Caine's office and US Central Command declined to comment.
On NBC, Waltz said the US military "has everything that it needs," though he acknowledged that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had inherited a depleted situation on taking office under the Trump administration.
Scepticism in Tehran
The senior Iranian source told Reuters that Tehran held little hope Trump's decision to pause the strikes reflected any real shift in the US negotiating position. "There is more scepticism than optimism about the halt in attacks," the source said, describing the pause as tactical rather than genuine, and pointing to what Iran regards as a long history of American deception.
"Stuck in limbo"
For the past two weeks, US forces had struck Iran nightly in what Washington described as retaliation for Iranian attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian forces responded by targeting water desalination plants in nearby Gulf Arab states. Iran says it is seeking to retain control of the strait, through which a fifth of global oil flows passed before the war. The renewed US campaign effectively derailed last month's interim agreement aimed at ending the conflict.
Trump's decision to pause the strikes followed a Friday meeting in which Caine and other senior military and political advisers reportedly raised concerns, according to several media outlets. CNN reported that Vice President JD Vance had expressed reservations, while Axios reported that Admiral Brad Cooper, the overall commander of US forces in the Middle East, had advised halting the bombing campaign, arguing it had reached the limits of its effectiveness.
Many in Iran remain uneasy. Nader, a 49-year-old import-export business owner in Tehran, told Reuters by telephone that he doubted any pause would last. "Everyone in the country is stuck in limbo," he said, describing Trump as playing games with Iran, neither ending the war and leaving the region nor striking decisively.
Source: Reuters
