Trump open to meeting Iran’s Pezeshkian at UN General Assembly
Governments across the Middle East are bracing for escalation after Iran claimed it had received intelligence that the United States was preparing a renewed bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps warned that all US bases and interests in the region would become targets of “continuous, effective and painful attacks without any limitations or considerations” if an attack took place.
President Donald Trump reportedly told a Fox News reporter that “very big things are going to be happening in the not-so-distant future” and that the options he was considering were “wiping Iran out, letting them rot economically or making a deal.” Iran’s leaders also pledged that some reprisals could extend as far as US naval forces in the Indian Ocean and accused some Gulf leaders of “double dealing” by allegedly giving a green light to US attacks on Iran.
Trump cut short a weekend visit to the Camp David presidential retreat on Sunday, with no official explanation. The State Department issued a security alert on Saturday to US citizens across the region warning that “the security environment remains complex with potential for unforeseen escalation. American citizens in the Middle East should exercise heightened vigilance.”
The exchange followed missile and drone strikes on Riyadh by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels on Saturday — the first sustained attack on the Saudi capital’s Aramco oil facilities since the Saudi-Houthi ceasefire broke down in June. Local photographs showed smoke pouring from the fuel storage depot at King Khalid International Airport and from the Aramco facility. Riyadh said it had intercepted the missiles. The port of Yanbu, vital for Saudi oil exports, was also targeted.
The United States largely regards the Houthis as a proxy Iranian force and argues that the group’s attacks on Riyadh would not happen without Tehran’s approval — a claim Iran denies.
Trump last week provoked questions about the level of US commitment to its Middle East allies when he spurned a call from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman asking the US to come to Saudi Arabia’s direct military help. The Saudis wanted US aid after the Houthis suddenly captured strategic ports along Yemen’s west coast overlooking the Red Sea, giving the Houthis control of the Bab al-Mandab strait, the narrow waterway that carries commercial shipping through the Red Sea toward Asia.
On the other side of the Arabian peninsula, the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and Oman is already effectively closed to western traffic, and pressure on European energy supplies is growing. France has begun taking emergency measures to prevent fuel shortages. Pressure on the Pentagon budget and dwindling munitions supplies from the Iran conflict have also made the United States reluctant to broaden the theater of war. Successive bombing campaigns have not dislodged the Houthis, whose rapid advance to the Red Sea coast took the Saudi-backed Yemeni forces by surprise.
In a bid to keep the United States out of its war with Saudi Arabia, the Houthis had given commitments to US officials that they would only target Saudi-related shipping in the Red Sea. Trump also told Fox News: “The US is in constant contact with the Houthis and they have agreed not to go to war with the US.” The Houthi government said 318 ships passed through the strait from September 10 to 18.
Trump is due to meet the six member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council when he attends the UN General Assembly in New York, in a meeting that is likely to cover Iran, Yemen, Gaza and the future of the US security guarantee. Trump said he was also open to a meeting with Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, in New York — an encounter that would probably be rejected by the Iranians, who refuse to negotiate directly with the US, operating instead largely through mediators. Pezeshkian is one of many world leaders due to address a general assembly that is likely to be dominated, on the sidelines at least, by Trump’s Middle East crisis.
Houthi political bureau member Hizam al-Assad said the attacks on Riyadh were a response to “hundreds of airstrikes that Riyadh had carried out against the people of Yemen.”
In a lengthy statement to parliament on Sunday, Mohammad Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator, insisted that Iran was not interested in waging a forever war with the United States. But Mohsen Rezaei, the new secretary of Iran’s supreme national security council, told Al Jazeera that Iran’s seven preconditions for peace remained in place, including the US lifting its blockade of Iranian oil ports, the restoration of Iran’s frozen assets and the lifting of sanctions on Iranian oil exports.
Rezaei also expressed anger with the Gulf states, saying they had been invited to a meeting in Salahah, Oman, last week to approve an agreed Oman-Iran plan for a new authorized shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz, but Saudi Arabia rejected attendance. “We invited them to the Salahah meeting and they reciprocated with a secret meeting in Germany with US Central Command and Israel,” he said.
Forces allied to the UN-recognized Yemeni government said they were pushing back against the Houthis across the country, claiming 75 Houthi soldiers were killed on Saturday. Those figures could not be independently verified.