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(Bloomberg) — Several Arab nations joined Pakistan in trying to push for a resolution to the Iran war as they urged President Donald Trump to allow more time for negotiations.
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While there were some indications of progress in talks to end the conflict, Axios and CBS News reported that Trump was preparing for a possible fresh round of strikes, although he hadn’t made a final decision.
Iran warned that any new attacks by the US or Israel would extend the war to “new regional fronts,” the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported, citing a military source.
One of the countries in the region, the United Arab Emirates, joined Qatar and Saudi Arabia in appeals to Trump, according to several people familiar with the matter.
And earlier Friday, the favored interlocutor between the US and Iran, Pakistan’s army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, arrived in Tehran.
Munir was welcomed by Iranian Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni, according to the military’s press wing. He is expected to take part in discussions that will cover US-Iran negotiations, said a Pakistani security official familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said there had been “slight progress” in negotiations. “I don’t want to exaggerate it, but there’s been a little bit of movement, and that’s good,” he told the media at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Sweden on Friday.
Trump told reporters at the White House that Iran was “dying to make a deal.” The president has threatened further attacks on the Islamic Republic if it doesn’t agree to terms acceptable to the US.
Since the ceasefire went into effect six weeks ago, Trump has veered between assurances that a peace accord was almost at hand and threats of new aerial assaults.
At the same time, opposition to the war has heightened among Americans upset about the sharp rise in gasoline prices as the conflict disrupts global energy markets. Those anxieties, reflected in several polls, have resonated on Capitol Hill, months before midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.
Earlier this week, the Republican-led Senate signaled mounting opposition to continuing the war with a procedural vote. On Thursday, the party’s leaders abruptly canceled a vote on the conflict as GOP absences threatened an embarrassing defeat for the president.
