Iran…Trump…Conflict/War…Evening… June 11, 2026…NO MORE US/Iran Attacks…Deal in the Works?

Speaking in the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon, Mr. Trump said that a deal could be signed “maybe over the weekend, in Europe,” and that if so, Vice President JD Vance would take part. The president is hosting a U.F.C. fight on the White House’s South Lawn for his 80th birthday on Sunday.

Mr. Trump also claimed that Iran’s supreme leader had approved the deal, which he said would result in the resumption of shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. But he also said the nuclear issues that have been a major sticking point in peace talks were still being discussed “conceptually.” Israel, which joined the United States in launching the war, said it was not a party to the deal, and has generally been excluded from the peace talks.

Thursday’s whipsawing comments were the latest in a dizzying series of statements Mr. Trump has made this week about a war that is stretching into its fourth month and is increasingly unpopular among his supporters. The latest round of tit-for-tat strikes has embroiled the Middle East and raised fears that the conflict could spiral out of control.

Mr. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had made it clear the escalation was not retaliation for a particular Iranian military action but was instead meant to pressure Tehran to agree to peace on Mr. Trump’s terms. Multiple rounds of talks over the past two months failed, with both sides presenting themselves as winning and maintaining their hard-line stances.

On Thursday morning in Washington, Mr. Trump had said that the United States would hit Iran “VERY HARD TONIGHT,” and mused in a television interview that he might deploy the U.S. military to take Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf, the heart of Iran’s oil economy.

This week’s fighting developed quickly after the downing of an American Apache helicopter over the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, for which the U.S. military blamed Iran. Two nights of U.S. strikes followed, mostly in southern Iran, and Iran attempted to strike Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain, which host U.S. troops. A New York Times analysis of satellite images suggested that one U.S. strike had hit a drinking-water facility, which could constitute a war crime. A spokesman for the U.S. military said it was investigating.

Here’s what else we’re covering:

• Strikes on vessels: India’s foreign ministry said 20 seafarers were rescued on Thursday from the third commercial vessel with an Indian crew to have been hit by American strikes in the past four days. Three Indian crew members died in one of those strikes on Wednesday, the Indian government said, the first seafarers known to have been killed in the U.S. military effort to enforce a blockade to starve Iran of oil revenue. Read more ›

• Economic impact: The European Central Bank raised interest rates on Thursday in response to rising inflation caused by the war. The World Bank said in a report that the war and its effects on energy prices were slowing global economic growth this year to its weakest pace since the Covid-19 pandemic. International oil prices fell more than 3 percent, below $90 a barrel, after Mr. Trump’s statement on canceling planned Iran strikes.

• Strait of Hormuz: Iran said earlier Thursday that the key shipping lane was closed to all vessels, including oil tankers and commercial ships. The U.S. military said the strait was not closed. The strait has effectively been blockaded by one or both sides since the war began in February, but the U.S. Navy has been guiding a small number of ships through, albeit a small fraction of how many would pass through in peace time. Read more ›

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The Guardian….

• Donald Trump announced that he was cancelling the third day of airstrikes and bombings that he had earlier said would happen because “discussions” with Iran “have been brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved”. This agreement will be signed “soon, very soon, maybe over the weekend in Europe” according to Trump, who said “(d)iscussions and final points have been, in both concept and great detail, approved by all parties involved”, which includes “the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, and others”.

• Israel, however, said it was “not a party to” what the prime minister’s office described as an emerging memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran. However, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had spoken to Trump, Netanyahu’s office said, and the final agreement at the conclusion of negotiations will include the removal of enriched material, the dismantling of enrichment infrastructure, limits on missile production, and the cessation of Iran’s support for its terrorist proxies in the region.

• Though Trump said that Iranian supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei had approved the agreement, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry told the state-run IRNA that Iran has not yet made a final decision. Iran will not compromise on its “red lines” in negotiations and any reports regarding the signing of the agreement was speculative as nothing has been finalised, Esmaeil Baghaei said Thursday. He added that a large part of the text had been finalised but the US repeatedly changed its positions during the talks.

• The strait of Hormuz will open “as soon as we sign” the documents of the “great settlement” reached with Iran, Trump said. “The whole Middle East is happy,” Trump said.

• Trump had earlier posted on social media that the US would seize Iran’s Kharg island “some point in the not too distant future”, but he later said a military operation to take Kharg would be off the table “if we sign this agreement”.

• The price of oil had risen after Trump threatened a ‘very hard’ attack on Iran – but it fell hours later after he announced he was canceling the strikes. Brent futures fell $3.37, or 3.6%, to $89.73 a barrel, while US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures fell $3.20, or 3.6%, to $86.83 a barrel, according to the Associated Press.

• A strike wounded 10 staff members of a hospital in the Lebanese city of Tyre on Thursday, the facility’s director told AFP, as Israeli raids continue in the country’s south. All three of the historic city’s hospitals have been hit since the start of the latest war between Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah and Israel in early March.

• UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said on Thursday that all parties must work towards a diplomatic settlement that fully respects the territorial integrity, sovereignty and political independence of Lebanon. In a post on X, Guterres added that there must be a comprehensive ceasefire and said he fully supports a monopoly on weapons by the Lebanese government.

• The Kuwaiti armed forces said it has responded to 24 Iranian drones in its airspace in the past two days. “The Iranian aggression resulted in limited material damage without any human casualties,” the army said in a statement on social media.

• The US has confirmed that it carried out a strike on Guinea-Bissau-flagged vessel M/T Jalveer, which according to Central Command (Centcom) was violating the blockade. Centcom alleged that the ship was attempting to transport Iranian oil through the Gulf of Oman.

• The Indian government has voiced a “strong protest” after three Indian seafarers were killed in US military strikes against oil tankers travelling through the strait of Hormuz. The three men who died were named as Patnala Suresh, a chief engineer, Aditya Sharma, a deck cadet, and Shivanand Chaurashiya, a fitter. Sarbananda Sonowal, India’s shipping and ports minister, called it a “profound loss to our maritime family”.

ISW….Iran Update Special Report, June 11, 2026

1.  The Iranian regime is using information operations to magnify the informational effect of its strikes as part of an effort to compel the United States to accept an agreement that is relatively advantageous to Iran.
2. Iran does not view the current phase in the conflict as negotiations in pursuit of a deal; it believes it is at war and that war will end with a deal.
3. The Iranian regime likely assesses that the United States does not seek a return to the conflict. Iran’s campaign seeks to leverage US fears about a return to conflict. The regime has almost certainly observed and reacted to US statements in the Western press.
4. Iran is attempting to reinforce what it appears to believe is a US reticence to resume the war by claiming that it is unwilling to yield to US military pressure.
5. Iran’s strikes on US bases and assets are also designed to have primarily informational and economic effects, rather than military effects. Iran continues to demonstrate that it is unwilling to yield to US military pressure and come to an agreement. Iran also knows that not conceding and amplifying its denial imposes political and economic cost on the United States as well.
6. Iran’s announcement that it has “closed” the Strait of Hormuz is an extension of Iran’s information operation to heighten political and economic pressure on the United States by amplifying its military operations in the region. It remains unclear whether Iran’s statement will translate into changes to its existing coercive maritime behavior.
7. The United States attempted to degrade Iran’s ability to sense, target, and strike vessels moving through the Strait of Hormuz and US air assets protecting their transit in its second round of airstrikes in two days on June 10.
8. The United States continued to enforce its blockade on Iranian ports as part of its economic pressure campaign on Iran. US forces disabled the Guinea-Bissau-flagged oil tanker M/V Jalveer on June 10 after the vessel attempted to violate the US blockade and transport Iranian oil outside of Iran.