Before dawn Thursday, top diplomats from Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan huddled in the Saudi capital, scrambling to open a back channel to Iran's most powerful force, the Revolutionary Guard, officials tell the Wall Street Journal. Their pitch: a five-day pause in fighting and a plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the oil chokepoint that's become the war's economic pressure valve. Those efforts reached Washington just as US President Trump—who had warned from Mar-a-Lago on Saturday that the US would "obliterate" Iran's power plants if the waterway wasn't reopened within 48 hours—was weighing military strikes. Two days later, he abruptly shelved that idea and publicly leaned into diplomacy. CNN has a similar article, and its sources say Gulf allies warned Trump that striking Iran's power plants would be a risky escalation.
The shift triggered a market surge and set off talk of a possible face-to-face meeting in Pakistan or Turkey involving US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, and potentially Vice President JD Vance, with Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi. But huge gaps remain. Tehran wants assurances of no future US or Israeli attacks and compensation for wartime damage; Washington still demands curbs on Iran's nuclear, missile, and proxy militia activities. Iranian officials publicly deny talks are happening, and the new Supreme Leader's circle is described as more hard-line, with parliamentary speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf viewed as one of the few figures who might sell any deal at home. Meanwhile, Iranian strikes on Israel and Gulf Arab states continued Tuesday, the AP reports.
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