Trump says he’s called off Iran strike planned for Tuesday at request of Gulf allies

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said he is hold­ing off on a mil­i­tary strike on Iran planned for Tues­day be­cause “se­ri­ous ne­go­ti­a­tions” are un­der­way.

Trump’s an­nounce­ment in a so­cial me­dia post Mon­day came as he had threat­ened the clock was tick­ing for Iran to strike a deal or fight­ing would re­new af­ter a frag­ile cease­fire.

The pres­i­dent did not of­fer de­tails about the planned at­tack but said but he in­struct­ed the U.S. mil­i­tary “to be pre­pared to go for­ward with a full, large scale as­sault of Iran, on a mo­ment’s no­tice, in the event that an ac­cept­able Deal is not reached.”

Trump had not pre­vi­ous­ly dis­closed that he was plan­ning a strike for May 19, but over the week­end he warned, “For Iran, the Clock is Tick­ing, and they bet­ter get mov­ing, FAST, or there won’t be any­thing left of them.”

Trump has been threat­en­ing for weeks that the cease­fire struck in mid-April could end if Iran did not strike a deal, with shift­ing pa­ra­me­ters for strik­ing such an agree­ment.

Trump said in his so­cial me­dia post that he was call­ing off the planned strike at the re­quest of al­lies in the Mid­dle East, in­clud­ing the lead­ers of Qatar, Sau­di Ara­bia and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates.

Trump has re­peat­ed­ly set dead­lines for Tehran and then backed off.

Trump in re­cent days has al­so spo­ken with Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu and Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping about the Iran war.