WASHINGTON/TEHRAN/ DUBAI – US President Donald Trump said Friday that the US has agreed to continue holding talks with Iran, but reiterated that the ceasefire with Tehran is over as Iran threatened to expand its retaliatory attacks to targets in Israel.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran has asked us to continue ‘talks.’ We have agreed to do so, but the United States has stated to them, in no uncertain terms, that the ceasefire is OVER!” Trump wrote, on his Truth Social platform.
The statement’s implications were unclear, however, especially given that the White House signaled Thursday night that it was prepared to adhere to the terms of the memorandum of understanding it signed with Iran last month if Tehran were to do the same.
The Truth Social post came amid reports that Qatari, Pakistani and other mediators had scrambled to quell the US-Iran flare-up, and to prevent the MOU from collapsing altogether.
A Qatari delegation visited the Islamic Republic on Friday, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported. Axios reported that the visit was coordinated with the US and quoted a diplomat as saying, “It’s clear both sides want to come back to the MOU.”
According to Axios, mediators thought the US and Iran had made progress toward a nuclear accord during talks held prior to the flare-up.
Iran’s top negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Tehran is ready for “all-out defense” if Washington betrays last month’s memorandum of understanding, and the war will never end with Iran’s surrender. Ghalibaf, speaking during a meeting with Ahmad Muzani, speaker of Indonesia’s People’s Consultative Assembly, said he has told US Vice President JD Vance during negotiations that Tehran does not trust Washington and that, in his view, only those prepared for war can negotiate with the United States. The remarks are posted on Ghalibaf’s Telegram account.
President Donald Trump said he has “left instructions” for the United States to respond with overwhelming military force if Iran were to succeed in assassinating him.
“I’ve been on their list for a long time. That’s what we’re dealing with,” Trump told The New York Post on Friday.
“The only thing is, I’ve left instructions — if anything happens, to just literally bomb them at levels that they’ve never seen before,” he added.
Asked about Israel sharing intelligence of a new Iranian plot to assassinate him, Trump dismissed that there was a new plan, telling The Post: “No, no. Israel came up with nothing.”
The president added that Iran has wanted him dead for years. “I’ve been number one [on Iran’s kill list] for a long time, and it’s the way life is, you know.”
In February 2025, Trump similarly said he’d left instructions if Iran were to assassinate him. “I’ve left instructions if they do it, they get obliterated, there won’t be anything left,” he said during a visit from Israel’s prime minister.
Hours before Trump’s social media post, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Council threatened to target Israel in response to American attacks.
In Israel, the Kan public broadcaster reported that some in Jerusalem wanted to renew strikes on Iran, but were waiting for Trump’s go-ahead to do so.
The unsourced report said officials in Jerusalem estimated that the mutual attacks between the US and Iran would continue in the coming days.
Similarly, The New York Post quoted a Jerusalem source who said Israel was interested in joining future strikes and fully renewing the war.
“We’re willing to do it again, if needed,” the unnamed source was quoted as saying on Wednesday, before the US began striking Iran.
The source added that while Israel was “not eager to go back to the day when people have to go to shelters,” it doesn’t want to “ignore what’s happening in Iran.”
“So if that will be the price we’ll have to pay, we will bear with that situation.”
Egyptian and Qatari foreign ministers call on the United States and Iran to resume negotiations, as US President Donald Trump says Washington had agreed to continue talks with Tehran but repeated that the ceasefire between the two countries is over.
During a phone call, Egypt’s Badr Abdelatty and Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani “urged all parties to give priority to the language of diplomacy and dialogue and to return to the negotiating table,” Egypt’s foreign ministry says in a statement.
International shipping group rejects Iran’s strait ‘authority’
Protection of shipping lanes was discussed at a session this week of the UN’s London-based International Maritime Organization’s 40-member governing council, where Gulf countries, the United States and Iran clashed over the future of the strait.
The IMO Council passed a non-binding decision, saying it “strongly condemns” Iran’s decision to “establish an entity purporting to control traffic through the strait.”
The resolution called upon member states not to recognize “Iran’s claim of sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, its assertions of jurisdiction over the maritime zones of third states in and around the strait, which violated the sovereignty, sovereign rights and exclusive jurisdiction of these states” and not to recognize any Iranian decisions aimed at “closing, obstructing, hampering or otherwise interfering with international navigation and the right of transit passage.”
Iran’s recently created Persian Gulf Strait Authority said in an advisory last month that no vessel was permitted to pass through the waterway “without a valid passage permit” issued by the body.
Iran, which does not have a seat on the Council, told IMO delegates this week it rejected “the selective, politically motivated and legally unfounded allegations” made against it. It added that its steps are meant to “safeguard Iran’s sovereignty and vital security interests,” and “do not constitute the closure of the strait.”
Russia suspends return of workers to Iran’s nuclear plant
Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom, meanwhile, said Friday it had suspended the return of its first employees to the construction site of new units at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant following new strikes on Iran.
An Iranian official told state media on Thursday that a projectile had struck the perimeter area of the facility, hitting a military site on the outskirts of Bushehr.
