Iran…Trump War…Evening …3/23/2026…In-Direct Talks?…A 5 Day Rest Period for the US Military ?

The speaker of Iran’s Parliament denied on social media that any such negotiations were underway, accusing Mr. Trump of issuing false statements to calm rattled energy markets. Iranian officials said their country would continue to fight.

But the Iranians and the Americans were exchanging messages through intermediaries about de-escalating the conflict, with the immediate goal of averting attacks on critical energy infrastructure, according to four Iranian officials and an Iranian diplomat. The officials spoke anonymously to discuss sensitive negotiations.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, after speaking with Mr. Trump, did not state whether peace talks were being held, but said that his American counterpart believed it was possible to “leverage” the military achievements to “realize the objectives of the war in an agreement.” Mr. Netanyahu, in a video statement, said Israel would pursue its campaigns against Iran and its ally in Lebanon, Hezbollah.

Whatever the truth about possible negotiations, the war continued to rage on multiple fronts. The U.S. and Israeli militaries said on Monday that they had carried out fresh waves of strikes on Iran, and Israel continued its offensive in Lebanon. Iran claimed attacks on Israel and Persian Gulf countries, though it was not clear if any of them penetrated air defenses.

Mr. Trump said that a son-in-law of his, Jared Kushner, and his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, were leading negotiations, and that the United States was communicating with one of Iran’s leaders, without naming the person. He said the U.S. side was demanding an end to Iranian nuclear enrichment and elimination of the country’s uranium stockpiles that could be used to one day make a bomb, terms that Iran had previously rejected.

Three officials said Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, and Mr. Witkoff had spoken on the phone in recent days, but they said those were preliminary discussions on de-escalation and should not be characterized as negotiations.

The war’s global fallout has seen the price of oil and gas rise sharply since late February — a crisis that is now worse than the oil shocks in 1973 and 1979 combined, according to the head of the International Energy Agency.

Mr. Trump’s statement about talks with Iran immediately reduced energy prices somewhat, but it was unclear how long that could last without tangible progress toward ending the war. The president has repeatedly given optimistic assessments that temporarily eased market jitters, only to have prices rise again.

More than 2,000 people have been killed since the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran that ignited the conflict more than three weeks ago, most of them in Iran and Lebanon, where Israel has fought a second front with Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group.

Here’s what else we’re covering:

• Israel: Israel’s military faced scrutiny on Sunday about Iranian missiles that hit Dimona, a city eight miles away from Israel’s main nuclear facility, and the nearby city of Arad on Saturday night. More than 10 people were seriously injured and dozens more hurt in the strikes, renewing concerns that Israel might be holding back on using its most sophisticated air defenses to avoid depleting them. The Israeli military said on Monday that its own errant artillery had killed an Israeli avocado farmer a day earlier near the Lebanese border. In a statement, the military apologized to the victim’s family and to the community of Misgav Am, the small farming cooperative where he lived.

• Attacks in Lebanon: The Israeli military said early Monday that it had hit the Dallafa Bridge in southern Lebanon, the latest in a series of strikes on vital transit routes that Israel said were used by Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed armed group. Monday night, the Israeli military said that it was targeting Hezbollah infrastructure in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, where residents reported hearing explosions.

• Qatar: A remote work mandate in Qatar, which was put in place earlier this month amid the war, has been terminated, Qatar’s state news agency reported in the early hours of Tuesday morning in the Middle East. Qataris in the public and private sectors will return to in-person work on Tuesday, it said.

• Death tolls: Iran’s U.N. ambassador said that at least 1,348 civilians had been killed in the country since the start of the war — a toll that has not been updated for over a week. On Friday, a Washington-based group, the Human Rights Activists News Agency, reported that at least 1,398 civilians had been killed.More than 1,000 people in Lebanon have been killed, the authorities there said on Thursday. At least 15 people have been killed in Iranian attacks on Israel, officials have said. The American death toll stood at 13 service members….

The Guardian…

• Donald Trump said the threatened US strikes on Iranian power plants had been postponed after “very good and productive” discussions with Iran about a “complete and total resolution of our hostilities” in the Middle East. After hitting a four-year high, the price of oil fell dramatically following Trump’s comments.

• Iran, however, flatly denies that any such talks have taken place, with the country’s parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf saying “fake news” was being used to “manipulate” the oil markets. Iran’s foreign ministry also denied that any talks with the US have taken place during the past 24 days.

• Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, said he had spoken with Trump, who saw a chance of an agreement with Iran, but added that Israel would continue its strikes against Iran and Lebanon. Trump believed there was a possibility of “leveraging the mighty achievements obtained by the IDF and the US military, in order to realize the goals of the war in a deal – a deal that will preserve our vital interests,” the Israeli PM claimed in a video statement released by his office.

• Israel said it had launched “wide-scale” strikes on Iran on Monday morning, while Tehran continued to fire missiles at the UAE and Saudi Arabia. The IDF also claimed to have hit struck the main security headquarters of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as part of a “wave of strikes that was completed a short while ago in the heart of Tehran”.

• An Israeli strike also hit Beirut’s southern suburbs on Monday, state media reported according to Agence France-Presse, hours after the Israeli army issued an order for residents of the area to evacuate. An AFPTV live broadcast showed a cloud of smoke over the densely populated southern suburbs, which are considered a Hezbollah stronghold and have not been hit since Friday night.

• British destroyer HMS Dragon arrived in the eastern Mediterranean, three weeks after an Iranian-made drone hit the British base of RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, the UK’s defence secretary said. The British government has faced criticism for the slowness to deploy a warship to the region, after moves by Greece and France to send extra naval support to Cyprus after the attack.

• Slovenia became the first EU member state to introduce fuel rationing in a bid to tackle disruptions caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran and Tehran’s retaliation on their allies in the Gulf.

• Saudi Arabia’s defence ministry said it has intercepted and destroyed at least five drones over the kingdom’s eastern region.

• The US embassy in Muscat lifted its shelter in place guidance for the city, but the guidance remains in place for the rest of Oman, the embassy said in a post on X. It had earlier issued a security alert for the whole country because of “ongoing activity”, without elaborating further.