Airstrikes batter Iran as it attacks Israel and Gulf states, while diplomatic efforts gather pace

Airstrikes bat­tered Iran and Iran­ian mis­siles and drones tar­get­ed Is­rael and sites across the Mideast on Tues­day, even as Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said the Unit­ed States was in talks with the Is­lam­ic Re­pub­lic to end the war.

With thou­sands more U.S. Marines on their way to the Gulf, both sides fir­ing bar­rages and Iran deny­ing any ne­go­ti­a­tions are tak­ing place, the war’s tem­po re­mained high a day af­ter Trump de­layed his self-im­posed dead­line for Iran to re­open the Strait of Hor­muz. Tehran’s choke­hold on that cru­cial wa­ter­way has snarled in­ter­na­tion­al ship­ping, sent fu­el prices sky­rock­et­ing, and threat­ened the world econ­o­my.

Pak­istan of­fered to host diplo­mat­ic talks, but Iran re­mained de­fi­ant, vow­ing to fight “un­til com­plete vic­to­ry.”

Any talks be­tween the U.S. and Iran would face mon­u­men­tal chal­lenges. Many of Wash­ing­ton’s shift­ing ob­jec­tives, par­tic­u­lar­ly over Iran’s bal­lis­tic mis­sile and nu­clear pro­grams, re­main dif­fi­cult to achieve. Mean­while, it’s not clear who in Iran’s gov­ern­ment would have the au­thor­i­ty to ne­go­ti­ate — or be will­ing to, as Is­rael has vowed to con­tin­ue tak­ing out lead­ers af­ter killing sev­er­al.

Iran re­mains high­ly sus­pi­cious of the Unit­ed States, which twice un­der the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has at­tacked dur­ing high-lev­el diplo­mat­ic talks, in­clud­ing with the Feb. 28 strikes that start­ed the cur­rent war.

Pak­istan says it is ready to host talks

Prime Min­is­ter She­hbaz Sharif wrote on X that Pak­istan is ready to “fa­cil­i­tate mean­ing­ful and con­clu­sive talks” to end the Iran war.

The U.S. had agreed in prin­ci­ple to join talks in Pak­istan, ac­cord­ing to three Pak­istani of­fi­cials, one Egypt­ian of­fi­cial and a Gulf diplo­mat, while me­di­a­tors were still work­ing to con­vince Iran.

One diplo­mat from the re­gion said the talks could hap­pen this week or ear­ly next week, and that spe­cial en­voy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kush­n­er are ex­pect­ed to rep­re­sent the U.S. The of­fi­cials spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty be­cause they were not au­tho­rized to pro­vide the de­tails to the me­dia.

The State De­part­ment de­clined to com­ment on the re­port­ed ef­forts.

Speak­ing Tues­day at the White House, the pres­i­dent said the U.S. is “in ne­go­ti­a­tions right now” and that the par­tic­i­pants in­clud­ed Witkoff, Kush­n­er, Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio and Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance.

“We have a num­ber of peo­ple do­ing it,” Trump said. “And the oth­er side, I can tell you, they’d like to make a deal.”

Iran­ian For­eign Min­is­ter Ab­bas Araghchi’s of­fice said he has been dis­cussing the war this week with sev­er­al coun­ter­parts. But Mo­ham­mad Bagher Qal­ibaf, the speak­er of Iran’s par­lia­ment, de­nied Trump’s claim of di­rect talks, and an Iran­ian mil­i­tary spokesman is­sued a new­ly de­fi­ant state­ment.

“Iran’s pow­er­ful armed forces are proud, vic­to­ri­ous and stead­fast in de­fend­ing Iran’s in­tegri­ty, and this path will con­tin­ue un­til com­plete vic­to­ry,” Iran­ian state tele­vi­sion quot­ed Maj. Gen. Ali Ab­dol­lahi Ali­aba­di as say­ing Tues­day.

Ali­aba­di did not say what vic­to­ry would look like, but Iran’s mil­i­tary could be try­ing to warn po­lit­i­cal lead­ers against of­fer­ing con­ces­sions in any pos­si­ble ne­go­ti­a­tions.

The Egypt­ian of­fi­cial said ef­forts are cen­tered on “trust-build­ing” be­tween the U.S. and Iran, with the aim of bring­ing about a pause in fight­ing. Is­rael is not in­volved.

The of­fi­cial, who is in­volved in the ef­forts, said the pri­or­i­ty is to pre­vent at­tacks on re­gion­al en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture and that they were work­ing on a “mech­a­nism” for Iran to re­open the Strait of Hor­muz.

Talk of ne­go­ti­a­tions briefly drove down oil prices and boost­ed stocks. But that respite was short-lived, with the price of Brent crude, the in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard, nudg­ing back over $100 a bar­rel Tues­day, up near­ly 40% since the war start­ed.

Iran hits Is­rael and Gulf neigh­bors while Is­rael at­tacks Beirut

Is­rael said it car­ried out an ex­ten­sive se­ries of strikes on Iran­ian “pro­duc­tion sites,” with­out pro­vid­ing more in­for­ma­tion. In Tehran, a mas­sive blast was heard in north­ern neigh­bor­hoods and an­oth­er in the city cen­ter.

Iran al­so fired at least 10 waves of mis­siles at Is­rael, and first re­spon­ders said three peo­ple were wound­ed in south­ern Is­rael, and four oth­ers suf­fered mi­nor wounds in Tel Aviv.

A Mo­roc­can civil­ian con­trac­tor with the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates’ armed forces was killed in Bahrain in an Iran­ian at­tack, the UAE De­fense Min­istry said. In Kuwait, pow­er lines were hit by air de­fense shrap­nel, caus­ing par­tial elec­tric­i­ty out­ages for sev­er­al hours. Sau­di Ara­bia said it de­stroyed Iran­ian drones tar­get­ing its oil-rich East­ern Province.

Is­rael pound­ed Beirut’s south­ern sub­urbs, say­ing that it was tar­get­ing in­fra­struc­ture used by the Iran-linked Hezbol­lah mil­i­tant group.

A strike on a res­i­den­tial apart­ment south­east of the Lebanese cap­i­tal killed at least three peo­ple, in­clud­ing a 3-year-old girl, ac­cord­ing to the Lebanese Health Min­istry. An­oth­er five peo­ple were killed in the south.

In north­ern Is­rael, a woman was killed by shrap­nel dur­ing an at­tack from Lebanon.

Mean­while, Lebanon de­clared Iran’s am­bas­sador per­sona non gra­ta and or­dered him to leave by Sun­day.

Iran­ian flights have been banned from land­ing in Lebanon, out of fear that they would car­ry weapons or fund­ing for Hezbol­lah, and some top Lebanese gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials have ac­cused Iran of drag­ging Lebanon in­to an­oth­er war with Is­rael.

Au­thor­i­ties say Is­raeli strikes have killed more than 1,000 peo­ple in Lebanon and dis­placed more than 1 mil­lion.

Iran’s death toll has sur­passed 1,500, its Health Min­istry has said. In Is­rael, 16 peo­ple have been killed. At least 13 U.S. mil­i­tary mem­bers have been killed, along with more than a dozen civil­ians in the oc­cu­pied West Bank and Gulf Arab states.

Marines are on the way to the Per­sian Gulf

Trump’s an­nounce­ment came as thou­sands of Marines head­ed to the re­gion, rais­ing spec­u­la­tion the U.S. may try to seize Kharg Is­land, which is vi­tal to Iran’s oil net­work. The U.S. bombed the Per­sian Gulf is­land more than a week ago, hit­ting its de­fens­es but say­ing it had left oil in­fra­struc­ture in­tact.

Iran has threat­ened to mine the Gulf if the U.S. ap­pears to be on the verge of land­ing troops.

Trump said he would hold off on a threat to bomb Iran’s pow­er sta­tions while talks un­fold — a de­lay that could be aimed at buy­ing time for the Marines to ar­rive, the New York-based So­ufan Cen­ter think tank wrote in an analy­sis.

How­ev­er, the cen­ter al­so not­ed that “Trump could be ac­tive­ly seek­ing an of­framp.”

Trump has said he has no plans to send ground forces in­to Iran but has not ruled it out. Is­rael has sug­gest­ed its ground forces could par­tic­i­pate in the war.

_DUBAI, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (AP)