US set to send airborne troops to Middle East as Trump claims talks with Iran taking place | US-Israel war on Iran
The US is preparing to deploy airborne troops to the Middle East as attacks intensified across the region on Tuesday and Donald Trump claimed the US was in “very good” talks with Iran to end the war.
Earlier on Wednesday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said it had launched a new wave of attacks against Tel Aviv and Kiryat Shmona in Israel, as well as US bases in Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain. The Gulf country’s civil aviation authority said drones crashed into a fuel depot at Kuwait international airport, causing a fire.
State media in Lebanon reported that at least six people were killed in Israeli attacks in a town and a Palestinian refugee camp south of Sidon, and three more people were killed in another town.
An Iranian military spokesman mocked the 15-point peace framework plan that Trump claimed was being discussed on Wednesday, saying the Americans were only negotiating with them.
There has been much speculation about what Trump’s latest alleged plan involved and how much of it had been updated from the now-outdated document the US presented to the Iranians in May last year.
Lieutenant Colonel Ebrahim Zolfaghari, spokesman for the Iranian army’s Khatam Al-Anbiya central headquarters, told state media: “Have your internal conflicts reached the point where you are negotiating with yourself?
“From day one, our first and last words were and will remain the same: Someone like us will never compromise with someone like you,” he said.
On Tuesday, Iranian bombings targeted Israel, Gulf Arab states and northern Iraq, while Israeli and US warplanes continued to launch strikes on Tehran and other targets in the Islamic Republic. Israel has indicated it plans to take control of parts of southern Lebanon, which a Hezbollah official told Reuters was an “existential threat” to the Lebanese state.
The United States appeared ready to send to the Middle East on Tuesday a combat team of up to 3,000 soldiers from the Army’s elite 82nd Airborne Division that could deploy anywhere in the world in less than 24 hours, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The paratroopers will join thousands of U.S. marines already heading to the Gulf, where Trump could order them to seize control of the Strait of Hormuz or attack or blockade Iran’s oil hub on Kharg Island.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump was exploring the “possibility” of diplomacy while saying the war would continue “unabated.”
Speaking in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump did not provide detailed information about the planned talks with Iran, but said that “they will make a deal.”
He said Tehran had offered the United States a “very special reward” regarding the flow of oil and gas through the Strait of Hormuz. He had given Washington “a very large gift worth a significant amount of money” that proved “we are dealing with the right people.”
Trump also claimed that Iran “agrees that it will never have a nuclear weapon.” He told reporters: “It all starts with the fact that they can’t have nuclear weapons… I don’t want to say it in advance, but they agreed that they will never have nuclear weapons. They agreed on that.”
He said the ongoing talks were attended by US vice president JD Vance, secretary of state Marco Rubio and envoy Jared Kushner.
But he said defense secretary Pete Hegseth was “pretty disappointed” at the prospect of the US negotiating a ceasefire with Iran.
“Pete didn’t want the problem to be resolved,” he said, adding that Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine were “the only two people who were pretty disappointed.”
“They weren’t interested in the solution,” he said. “They were just interested in winning this thing.”
As the human and economic toll of the joint US-Israeli invasion mounts and the conflict enters its fourth week, claims that the White House is holding last-ditch negotiations to end the war have not been confirmed by intermediaries or the Iranian government. Iran’s ambassador to the UN said at least 1,348 civilians have been killed in the country since the start of the war.
Official sources in Tehran denied any talks were ongoing. Tehran distrusts any U.S. offer of talks in part because it was in talks with the U.S. before the surprise attack that started the war and killed religious leader Ali Khamenei and dozens of senior officials. Iran was also in talks last year when the US and Israel attacked its nuclear facilities, starting a 12-day war.
“We must think wisely,” Esmail Kowsari, a member of the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, was quoted as saying by the semi-official Fars news agency. “Their nature is to sow discord to make people distrust the authorities and believe that such actions are taking place, when in fact they are not.”
But potential intermediaries, including Pakistan, Oman, Egypt and others, have confirmed tentative efforts to establish communication channels between Washington and Tehran. Analysts note deep divisions among surviving senior officials in Tehran, which could explain some of Iran’s defiant response.
Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi has spoken about the war with his counterparts in Azerbaijan, Egypt, Oman, Pakistan, Russia, South Korea, Turkey and Turkmenistan in recent days, his office said.
In Islamabad, officials raised the possibility of a meeting between Iranian officials and Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, Kushner and J.D. Vance. A European official told Reuters that Egypt, Pakistan and Gulf countries had conveyed messages although there were no direct negotiations between the two countries.
Trump reposted Pakistani prime minister Shehbaz Sharif’s offer to host US-Iran talks in Islamabad on his Truth Social platform.
The move comes after the United States and Iran threatened strikes over the weekend that could cut power to millions of people in Iran and around the Gulf and disable desalination plants that supply drinking water to many desert countries.
On Monday, Trump delayed a deadline for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz to shipping or have its power plants targeted by airstrikes, briefly causing oil prices to fall and stockpiles to rise. The period will now expire on Friday.
The New York Times reported Tuesday that Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has been quietly lobbying Trump to pressure regime change in Iran by destroying the country’s hard-line government. Publicly, Saudi Arabia was more measured, condemning Iran’s missile and drone launches but initially opposing joint US-Israeli strikes.
Meanwhile, Iranian media reported that Israeli-US strikes targeted two gas facilities and a pipeline, hours after Trump backed off his threat to attack energy infrastructure. Fars news agency, which did not provide a source and was Iran’s only news source reporting the incident, said facilities in central Iran were “partially damaged”. It was stated that the attack also targeted the gas pipeline of the Khorramshahr power plant in the southwest of the country.
Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel will continue to attack Iran and Lebanon, targeting the Iran-backed Islamist militant movement Hezbollah, even as the United States considers a ceasefire. “There are more,” the Israeli prime minister said.
Iran fired a wave of missiles at Israel early Tuesday, and there were reports of hits in the north of the country.
In Tel Aviv, a missile with a 100 kg (220 lb) warhead evaded Israeli defenses and crashed into a street in the center of the city, blowing out the windows of a neighboring apartment building and causing smoke to erupt.
Earlier in the day, Israel struck the southern suburbs of Beirut, saying it was targeting infrastructure used by Hezbollah.
At least two people were killed in an attack on an apartment in the southeast of the Lebanese capital, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
Air defense shrapnel hit power lines in Kuwait, causing power outages. Missile warning sirens sounded in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia’s defense ministry said it had destroyed 19 Iranian drones targeting the oil-rich Eastern province.
