How Trump backed off on resuming Iran attacks — for now

By Kevin Liptak, Jennifer Hansler, Zachary Cohen, Haley Britzky, CNN

(CNN) — In President Donald Trump’s telling, he was an hour away from ordering new strikes on Iran when he abruptly announced on social media Monday that he would allow more time for diplomacy.

“They’re loaded to the brim,” he said Tuesday of his armada of warships in the region, “and we were all set to start.”

Exactly how close the war was to restarting is something of an open question. Officials from some Gulf countries, who Trump claimed had urged him to hold off strikes, said they weren’t aware of impending military action.

Other sources said renewed strikes were expected to begin at the start of this week — the same timeline Trump offered up — while two additional sources said they were not anticipated until the end of the week.

Whatever the schedule, Trump’s decision to back away was the latest example of the president threatening to use withering force on Iran, only to suddenly switch gears.

A day after his latest backdown, standing in front of a giant construction pit on the White House South Lawn, the president set a new timeline for Tehran to produce an acceptable deal to end the war.

“I’m saying two or three days, maybe Friday, Saturday, Sunday, something, maybe early next week,” he said. “A limited period of time.”

Whether the new deadline sticks remains to be seen. Officials say Trump is reluctant to resume the war, far preferring to strike a deal. The military options now before him would extend an unpopular and costly conflict that has caused his approval ratings to sink.

Yet despite Trump’s claims of advancing negotiations, Iran has not publicly backed off some of its core demands. And with a stockpile of enriched uranium still buried deep underground and some of Iran’s missile capabilities still intact, the war has not yet fully accomplished all of Trump’s objectives.

That leaves him in a difficult position as he weighs his next move. Attack options have been under discussion at the White House for at least the past week, but any action was on hold while the president was in China. Back in the US over the weekend, Trump talked over those plans with top advisers, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and special envoy Steve Witkoff at his riverside golf club in Virginia.

The US military has detailed battle plans for a renewed multi-phase air campaign against Iran, including the chosen targets and their grid coordinates and the fleshed-out phases of the campaign, two sources familiar with the plans told CNN.

“They were not f***ing around,” one source said of the advanced nature of the military’s plans.

After growing frustrated with the state of negotiations, Trump had made moves to strike new targets after being given a list of options from senior military advisers, according to a person familiar with the plan.

Gulf leaders call for restraint

But as Trump prepared to give his final authorization, his administration spoke separately with the leaders of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who pressed the US to hold off on launching military action in favor of seeing if a diplomatic resolution could be reached, a regional source told CNN.

One regional source said the request was tied to the expectation Iran would retaliate against the Gulf nations if Trump resumed bombing, as Tehran did at the onset of the war. Although nations in the region say they are still able to defend themselves, there is a sense that a prolonged renewal of fighting could strain resources and leave those nations — and their critical energy infrastructure — vulnerable.

Pressed on Tuesday whether Gulf leaders expressed concern about Iranian retaliation, Trump acknowledged that remained a risk.

“They still have a little capacity,” he said of Iran’s ability to attack others in the Middle East. “Not much, but they have a little.”

Saudi Arabia briefly restricted US access to bases and airspace in response to Project Freedom — the brief US operation to guide ships through the Strait of Hormuz — and then lifted the pause when Trump abruptly suspended the operation, a US official and another source familiar with the matter said.

Several Gulf countries have indicated they will likely be more restrictive on when US forces can use military bases in their countries or fly over their airspace if Trump ultimately moves forward with additional strikes, a US official told CNN. Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are all home to key US air bases in the region and could restrict access going forward, the official said.

The UAE has also voiced opposition to additional US military operations and may similarly move to limit US base access if strikes resume, the US official said. Any restrictions on base access or overflight by those countries would undoubtedly complicate US operations going forward.

In their recent calls for restraint, the Gulf leaders presented “a unified front” to the Trump administration, another regional official said. One of their data points: it is Hajj season — a significant period in Islam that traditionally calls for goodwill and sees thousands of pilgrims traveling to Mecca, in Saudi Arabia.

The Gulf leaders stressed to the US that there had been “positive momentum” in the Pakistan-led mediation efforts and that it would be wise to allow the diplomatic channels more time to work.

The pressure appeared to work.

“I had made the decision. So they called up, they had heard I had made the decision, and they said, ‘Sir, could you give us a couple of more days? Because we think they’re being reasonable,’” Trump said Tuesday.

Whatever momentum exists in the negotiations has been mostly behind the scenes. In public, neither side has shown much willingness to back off firm positions on nuclear enrichment or Iran’s ability to retain its stockpile of near-weapons-grade uranium.

After weeks of exchanging papers, Iran’s latest proposal did not offer significant concessions on some critical sticking points, according to a person familiar with the matter, who said issues of nuclear enrichment remain central to the impasse.

Speaking at a White House briefing Tuesday, Vance admitted there were lingering questions about what precisely Iran’s negotiating position was amid competing factions in Tehran.

“You negotiate with people and sometimes you feel like you’re making progress and sometimes you feel like you’re not making progress,” he said. “What I think is that the Iranians want to make a deal. What I think is that the Iranians recognize that a nuclear weapon is the red line for the United States of America, that they’ve internalized that. But we’re not going to know until we’re actually putting pen to paper on signing a deal.”

Military plans still ready to go

Despite Trump’s decision to hold off, the plans against Iran are still available to commanders and could be put into action at any time.

The operation is expected to be renamed from Operation Epic Fury — which the administration has said is over — to Operation Sledgehammer, sources said. NBC first reported that the name of the operation was expected to change to Operation Sledgehammer.

Changing the name of the operation could amount to an effort to skirt the War Powers Act — which requires congressional authorization for the use of military force 60 days after lawmakers are notified of military action — by restarting the 60-day clock on a new operation.

Asked if the administration would be seeking congressional approval upon the restart of military operations, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the ceasefire, announced in early April and then extended, had effectively stopped the 60-day clock.

“With the ceasefire, the clock stops. If it were to restart, that would be the president’s decision,” Hegseth said during a press briefing earlier this month. “That option is always there, and Iran knows that.”

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CNN’s Natasha Bertrand contributed to this report.