Diplomatic efforts toward a settlement had intensified before the midterm elections. Sunday’s statement therefore comes after a phase in which the search for an agreement took on a more visible place.
He nonetheless stated that he could order a resumption of fighting if the situation changed. This caveat leaves open a new American intervention, despite the assessment that a resumption was unlikely.
The conflict was triggered in late February by U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran. Since then, the question of a diplomatic settlement has remained tied to the evolution of the balance of power created by those attacks.
On mediation, Donald Trump indicated that “it will take some time before the atmosphere is favorable to the resumption of the mediators’ travel.” The interview with CNN thus combines a signal of conditional restraint and a warning: the war would resume, according to him, only if the negotiations with Tehran did not result in a “very solid” agreement.
Donald Trump said on Sunday, November 8, that a resumption of the war with Iran was “very unlikely” if progress was made in the negotiations with Tehran. The American president was speaking in a telephone interview with a CNN journalist. “It depends on whether or not they sign a very solid agreement,” Donald Trump said during the interview. He thus made a lasting lull contingent on the conclusion of a text he describes as sufficiently binding.
This assessment places the talks at the center of the military calculation. According to him, the prospect of a return to fighting depends first on the parties’ ability to turn the discussions into a written commitment.