Brent crude dropped 10% in a day on March 23, and the S&P 500 rose 1.15%. The trigger was a message from Washington to Tehran.
A senior official in Iran’s Foreign Ministry told CBS News that day that Iran had received a message from the United States through mediators, which could lead to talks between the two countries. “We received points from the U.S. through mediators and they are being reviewed,” the official said. The ministry had at first denied that any talks were happening.
The message followed remarks from President Donald Trump, who had suggested a deal was within reach. He told reporters the two sides shared about 15 points of agreement and that Iranian officials had told him “they want peace.” His forecast: “I think there’s a very good chance we’re going to end up in a deal.”
Ultimatum shelved
Over the weekend Trump had threatened strikes on Iran’s power plants unless Iran reopened a key oil chokepoint. On Monday he backed away from that. The US military would hold off on bombing Iranian energy infrastructure for five days, he said, “subject to the success of the ongoing meetings and discussions.”
The war was 23 days old. Trump’s comments raised hopes that it might be heading toward an end.
Who is talking to whom
Iran and the US have no formal diplomatic relations and have long communicated indirectly, using regional states as go-betweens. Pakistan has tried to cast itself as a mediator, CBS News noted. Oman has often played that role, and most recently brokered several rounds of nuclear talks earlier this year.
Trump said Washington was in contact with a “top person” in Iran, though not the new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei. He would not name the person “because I don’t want him to be killed.”
What a deal might contain
The outline of any agreement was unclear. Trump said Iran had “agreed they will not have a nuclear weapon,” which was one of the war aims he set at the start of the conflict, together with weakening Iran’s conventional military. Iran has long denied wanting a nuclear weapon. Earlier in the year, though, the two sides failed to settle the nuclear question, with Trump pressing Iran to give up all uranium enrichment, a demand Iran has long rejected.
Whether Israel would be part of a deal was also open. The US and Israel began striking Iran together in late February, but they have sometimes disagreed over how far to go. Trump said the week before that he disapproved of Israeli strikes on a major Iranian natural gas field.
CBS News asked the White House for comment.
