Trump open to talks with Iran as conflict deepens in Middle East | Iran

Donald Trump said on Sunday he was ready to talk to what’s left of Iran’s leadership after the country’s supreme leader was killed in US-Israeli airstrikes aimed at toppling the regime.

Trump said it was the second day of intense bombardment of Iranian cities and that Tehran’s missile counterstrikes were causing tremors in the region and the global economy.

Oil prices rose 10% to $80 a barrel for Brent crude amid predictions that the ongoing war could soon push the price to $100 a barrel after attacks on two ships largely blocked tanker traffic from the Gulf to the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran’s UN Ambassador Amir-Saeid Iravani told an emergency security council meeting on Saturday that hundreds of civilians were killed or injured in US-Israeli attacks. He said they deliberately targeted civilian neighborhoods in many cities.

The death toll is expected to increase after the second day of the bombing. Iranian state media said 165 people were confirmed dead in a bomb attack on a girls’ primary school in the southern city of Minab on Saturday.

Among the dead was the country’s religious leader, Ali Khamenei, who has ruled the country since 1989 and was the primary target of the Israeli attack on Saturday morning. According to multiple US reports, the CIA had been tracking Khamenei for months. The New York Times reported that the CIA tipped off Israel as the leader gathered top defense aides at his compound in Tehran, triggering the decision to attack.

Israel’s Channel 12 channel reported that the Israeli army used a ruse to leave the Iranian administration unprepared. On the morning of the operation, army officers were asked not to park their cars in their usual places to avoid detection by Iranian spies. In addition, false information was leaked that Chief of General Staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir was staying at home.

The channel quoted officials as saying that the Israeli air force killed 30 senior Iranian officials in the first 30 seconds of the attack.

Trump told Fox News that 48 Iranian leaders were killed in the first two days of the bombing and claimed in a social media post that nine Iranian warships were sunk and the naval headquarters was destroyed.

Nine Israelis have been killed in Iranian missile counterstrikes so far, and US forces have confirmed their first casualties of the war: three dead and five injured by shrapnel. In the official statement, no details were given about where and how the losses occurred.

Iran also targeted Gulf countries that host US military bases. Airports in Kuwait, Abu Dhabi and Dubai were damaged by missiles and remained closed on Sunday; This has caused one of the most serious disruptions to global aviation in recent years.

Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to intensify air strikes against Iran.

The Israeli prime minister said: “Our forces are currently attacking the heart of Tehran with concentrated force, and this will increase further in the coming days.”

Trump claimed that the attack against Iran, launched with the aim of regime change, was “progressing rapidly”.

In a separate interview, Trump said he was open to talks with Iran’s surviving and newly appointed leaders.

“They want to talk, and I agreed to talk, so I’ll talk to them,” he told the Atlantic magazine, without saying when the talks would begin. “They should have done it sooner. They should have given what was very practical and easy earlier. They waited too long.”

Asked if Iran was prepared to prolong the war to support a popular uprising against the regime, Trump said he was not committed and would only “look at the situation as it happens.”

He was speaking at a time when the global effects of the war were beginning to be felt. The rise in oil prices follows two reported attacks on tankers in or near the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian state television reported that an oil tanker trying to pass “illegally” through the strait, which was declared closed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was hit and sank.

About 150 tankers reportedly anchored instead of passing through the waterway, through which approximately one-fifth of the world’s oil trade passes. Major container shipping companies, including MSC and Maersk, have suspended navigation in the area.

The ship attacks were a reminder of the conflict’s potential to trigger environmental disaster.

In launching the war, Trump said it would provide the Iranian people with an opportunity to rise up and overthrow the 47-year-old Islamic regime. Protests across the country at the beginning of this year were brutally suppressed by security forces, killing tens of thousands of civilians by some estimates.

Iranian officials said 22 border guards were killed in Mehran on the Iran-Iraq border; this was a sign that the United States and Israel were trying to weaken the regime’s control over Iran’s borders in order to support anti-government separatists.

Iranians across the country said they felt a mixture of terror and optimism as the bombings continued. Some expressed relief that the long-awaited attacks had arrived, and opponents of the regime spoke of hope that they might lead to political change; but both have relented over fears that the attacks would lead to more civilian deaths in a country already reeling from recent bloodshed.

State television said Iran’s top security official, Ali Larijani, accused the United States and Israel of trying to plunder and disintegrate Iran and warned “separatist groups” of a harsh response if they tried to intervene.

The regime in Tehran has insisted that Khamenei’s killing will not weaken its resolve. Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagir Galibaf said Netanyahu and Trump “crossed the red line” and “they will pay the price for it,” according to state media.

President Masoud Pezeshkian said a leadership council consisting of himself, the head of the judiciary and a member of the powerful Guardian Council had temporarily assumed the duties of the supreme leader until a replacement was chosen. Khamenei had not named a successor.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said he expected the process of choosing the new supreme leader to be relatively quick.

“Of course, there is no fixed timeline,” Baghaei told MS Now Velshi programme. “They can make a decision as quickly as possible. I don’t think it will take that long because we are in a critical situation with a war of aggression imposed by the United States and Israel. Therefore, I predict that the process will be accelerated.”

In an interview with the Atlantic, Trump shrugged off the suggestion that the economic effects of the war could hurt the Republican party’s November congressional elections.

“We have the greatest economy we’ve ever had,” the president said. But only one in four Americans approve of an attack on Iran, before any inflationary pressure from a war-induced rise in oil prices begins to be felt in the United States, according to a Reuters-Ipsos poll released on Sunday.