On Saturday, as American media reported that Washington and Israel had been finalising what multiple sources described as one of the most intense bombing campaigns ever planned against Iran's energy infrastructure, Donald Trump reached for his phone. In a post on Truth Social, the US president announced that he had cancelled the strikes — not because the threat had passed, but because, he said, Iran and other regional states had asked him to wait while the outlines of a deal were being agreed. The proposed terms, as Trump described them, are sweeping. They would include the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow waterway through which roughly a fifth of the world's traded oil passes — and what he called an end to Iran's nuclear threat.

Trump said the United States remained "locked and loaded," invoking the scale of military power not seen, in his words, since the Second World War. Whether that framing was meant to reassure allies or unsettle Tehran is a question that several governments are now quietly asking. Tehran's own position, expressed only hours before Trump's post, was considerably less conciliatory. Iranian officials accused Washington of escalating tensions and warned that any regional state cooperating with the United States would be "engulfed by the flames of war.

" Iran had not publicly responded to Trump's announcement by Saturday evening, a silence that analysts noted was itself a form of communication.