The US military said its naval blockade against Iran ‘remains in full effect’ but did not explain why it halted a streak of 13 nights of escalating strikes.
Asked about the pause, a senior official in President Donald Trump’s administration said Trump ‘has always been clear that his preference is diplomacy, but he has shown Iran what will happen if they fail to come to the table in a serious way’.
The Iran war broadened over the weekend despite a pause in US strikes, as Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis attacked oil installations along the Red Sea coast and Iran accused Ukraine of targeting one of its vessels in the Caspian Sea.
There were also no weekend reports of attacks by Iran on neighbours, similar to its daily rejoinders to the US attacks.
Trump has decided, for now, to back away from plans to ramp up attacks on Iran, the New York Times said on Saturday, citing two people briefed on the discussion.
The president and his advisers, the newspaper said, have concerns about expanding the conflict, depleting defence stockpiles, alienating Middle East and affecting energy supplies and the global economy.
Vice President JD Vance and Gen Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both raised concerns about the US munitions stockpile with Trump during a White House meeting on Friday, a US official told CNN.
Operations are ‘on a hold’, a Department of Defence source told the broadcaster on Saturday.
Despite the Gulf lull, Saturday’s fighting between Iran’s Houthi allies and Saudi Arabia showed that the war, which has already disrupted energy supplies through the Strait of Hormuz, could affect a second major shipping route and reignite Yemen’s civil war.
Separately, Iran’s foreign ministry accused Ukraine of attacking an Iranian commercial vessel in the Caspian Sea, saying one sailor was killed and another injured.
The ministry summoned Ukraine’s chargé d’affaires in Tehran to protest over an attack it described as ‘hostile and criminal’, state news agency IRNA said.
The Iranian denunciation coincided with comments by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that Kyiv had noted Russia was passing on to Iran its satellite observations in the Middle East, to enable it to direct strikes in the region.
In Yemen, officials said the air force of the Saudi-backed, internationally recognised government, which has opposed the Houthis for more than a decade, struck Houthi sites in the Marib and Al Jawf provinces.
The officials said both sides in Yemen’s civil war were mobilising forces along the front.
Saudi Arabia has led an Arab coalition battling the Houthis since the Iran captured Yemen’s capital, Sana’a.
The civil war, in which famine and fighting killed hundreds of thousands, has been paused by a ceasefire since 2022.
But that truce broke down this month, with the Houthis effectively joining the wider war their Iranian allies have waged since being attacked by the US and Israel five months ago.
The Houthis have declared a naval blockade in Red Sea over the past week, and Houthi leader Abdul Malik Al Houthi said all Saudi oil facilities could be targets.
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