Several Middle Eastern allies of the United States have urged the Trump administration to delay strikes on Iran.<\/b>
\nWashington: Several Middle Eastern allies of the United States have urged the Trump administration to hold off on strikes against Iran for the government\u2019s deadly crackdown on protesters, according to an Arab diplomat familiar with the matter.
Top officials from Egypt, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have raised concerns in the last 48 hours that a US military intervention would shake the global economy and destabilize an already volatile region, said the diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the sensitive conversations.
Oil prices fell on Thursday, January 15, as the markets appeared to take note of President Donald Trump\u2019s shifting tone as a sign that he\u2019s leaning away from attacking Iran after days of launching blistering threats at Tehran for its brutal crackdown.
Nevertheless, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday maintained that \u201call options remain on the table\u201d for Trump as he deals with Iran.
\u201cThe truth is only President Trump knows what he\u2019s going to do and a very, very small team of advisers are read into his thinking on that,\u201d Leavitt said. She added, \u201cHe continues to closely monitor the situation on the ground in Iran.\u201d
The nationwide protests challenging Iran\u2019s theocracy appeared increasingly smothered Thursday, a week after authorities shut the country off from the world and escalated a bloody crackdown that activists say has killed at least 2,637 people.
The delicate diplomacy from Arab officials comes during a period of rhetorical whiplash from Trump.
Trump, in a matter of a day, went from offering assurances to Iranian citizens that \u201chelp is on its way\u201d and urging them to take over their country\u2019s institutions to abruptly declaring on Wednesday that he had received information from \u201cvery important sources on the other side\u201d that Iran had stopped killing protesters and was not going forward with executions.
The Arab officials also urged senior Iranian officials to quickly end the violent repression of protesters. They warned that any Iranian response to a US action against the US or other targets in the region would have significant repercussions for Iran, the diplomat said.
Asked about reports of allies asking Trump to hold off on the strikes at a White House briefing, Leavitt did not directly address the matter.
Ambassador Mike Waltz, the US envoy to the United Nations, said military action is an option that remains in play.
\u201cPresident Trump is a man of action, not endless talk as we see at the United Nations,\u201d Waltz said in remarks at a meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the Iran protests. \u201cHe has made it clear all options are on the table to stop the slaughter.\u201d
But Trump himself appeared to send signals he could be backing away from a potential U.S. strike on Iran after days of threatening one was in the offing.
He took to social media to highlight a Fox News headline about the suspension of a death sentence for an Iranian shopkeeper, 26-year-old Erfan Soltani.
Iranian state media denied Soltani had been condemned to death. Iranian judicial authorities said Soltani was being held in a detention facility outside of the capital.
Alongside other protesters, he has been accused of \u201cpropaganda activities against the regime,\u201d state media said.
\u201cThis is good news. Hopefully, it will continue!\u201d Trump said in his post about the reported pause in the execution of the shopkeeper. The White House later asserted that Iran had halted 800 scheduled executions.
Trump has been known to purposefully display ambiguity about his intentions to maintain an element of surprise.
Last June, as Trump was weighing whether to follow Israel as it carried out strikes on Iran, Leavitt read a message to reporters that she said came \u201cdirectly from the president\u201d in which Trump said he would decide whether to strike Iran \u201cwithin the next two weeks.\u201d
Less than two days later, Trump ordered B-2 bombers to carry out strikes on critical Iranian nuclear sites.
Jeremy Shapiro, research director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, said Trump may have decided to hold off on strikes because of concerns about the current U.S. force posture in the Middle East.
There are currently no US aircraft carriers, considered a critical asset in a significant military operation, in the region after the USS Gerald R. Ford and its strike group were deployed to the U.S. Southern Command region as part of a massive counter-narcotics operation focused on Venezuela.
\u201cIt might be that they\u2019re delaying things and using the time for getting that posture correct,\u201d Shapiro said.
The Trump administration on Thursday, January 15, also announced new sanctions against Iran.
Included in Thursday\u2019s sanctions is the secretary of the Supreme Council for National Security, whom the Treasury Department accuses of being one of the first officials to call for violence against Iranian protesters.
The Treasury Department\u2019s Office of Foreign Assets Control also designated 18 people and companies that the US says have participated in laundering money from sales of Iranian oil to foreign markets as part of a shadow banking network of sanctioned Iranian financial institutions Bank Melli and Shahr Bank.
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