Iran Pauses Strikes Amid U.S. Halt
PHOTO CAPTION: A billboard depicting U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a building in Tehran, Iran, July 21, 2026.Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Iran will halt its attacks as long as the United States continues its pause in airstrikes, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Sunday.
The statement follows 13 nights of intensifying U.S. strikes on Iran. The Pentagon suspended the bombing campaign late Friday, and no U.S. attacks were reported on Saturday or Sunday.
Iran, which had responded to each night of U.S. strikes with attacks on neighboring countries that host U.S. bases, has also held fire for two days.
Tehran’s position remains “attack for attack,” the senior Iranian official said on condition of anonymity.
“If the attacks stop, Iran will also halt its operations. That message has already been conveyed to the United States,” the official told Reuters.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz said President Donald Trump paused the strikes to give diplomacy more time.
“He’s giving talks some space, he’s giving it a little bit of room,” Waltz said on “Fox News Sunday,” without providing further details.
U.S. military officials had also warned that nearly two weeks of bombing had largely exhausted the sets of targets selected before the campaign, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The strikes were intended to deter Iranian attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway that has become a major flashpoint in the war.
The official said resuming large-scale combat operations remained an option. However, General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, privately cautioned Trump that doing so could further reduce U.S. munitions stocks.
Those concerns included interceptors used by American air-defense systems in the Middle East, the official said.
Caine’s office and U.S. Central Command declined to comment. U.S. military leaders traditionally do not discuss their private advice to a sitting president, including during congressional testimony.
Waltz said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the U.S. military “has everything that it needs.” He also said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth inherited a depleted military-supply situation when he joined the Trump administration.
A second senior Iranian source told Reuters that Tehran remained skeptical that the pause represented a significant shift in the U.S. negotiating position.
“There is more scepticism than optimism about the halt in attacks,” the source said on condition of anonymity. “The prevailing view is that the pause is tactical rather than genuine.”
The source said Iran’s position was shaped by what Tehran views as a history of U.S. deception.
For the previous two weeks, U.S. forces had attacked Iran nightly in what Washington said was retaliation for Iranian strikes on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian forces responded by attacking water-desalination plants in nearby Gulf Arab countries.
Iran says it intends to retain control of the strait, which carried one-fifth of global oil flows before the war.
The renewed U.S. military campaign effectively ended an interim agreement reached the previous month that had been intended to help end the war.
Trump’s decision to suspend the attacks followed a Friday meeting in which senior military and political advisers reportedly raised concerns about continuing the campaign.
CNN reported that Vice President JD Vance expressed reservations. Axios reported that Admiral Brad Cooper, the top commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, recommended stopping the bombing because it had reached the limits of its effectiveness.
Residents in Iran remained uncertain about whether the pause would last.
Nader, a 49-year-old import-export business owner in Tehran, said the uncertainty had left people exhausted.
“Everyone in the country is stuck in limbo,” he told Reuters by telephone. “Trump is playing games with Iran. He neither ends the war and leaves the region nor strikes decisively. It’s exhausting.”
(Source: Reuters)
