Politics 4 min read By Alice Ashford
Trump says no strike on Iran today as Qatari delegation visits Tehran
US President Donald Trump said there would be no strike against Iran on Sunday, as Tehran says diplomatic messages are still being passed through intermediaries and Houthi missile attacks on Riyadh continue.
US President Donald Trump said there would be no strike against Iran on Sunday, easing immediate fears of a return to all-out war between Washington and Tehran. Asked whether he planned to attack, Trump first suggested it would be foolish to signal his intentions, then added: «No. There will not be a strike today.»
Iran's foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, said Tehran had not closed the window for diplomacy and that messages were still being passed to the United States through intermediaries. Negotiations over the war have appeared stalled for weeks. Baghaei told a German broadcaster that Washington appeared to persist with unilateral demands, and that Trump and US officials repeatedly used the phrase «complete surrender», which he said no Iranian would accept. Concern among Iranians about a possible renewed full-scale conflict has grown as Israel and the United States approach elections in the coming days.
Military tensions remained high across the region. The head of US Central Command, Admiral Brad Cooper, said more than 3,000 commercial vessels had transited the Strait of Hormuz with US military support over the past six months. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated his warning, citing intelligence, that Iran or its proxies could attack ahead of Tuesday's closely fought elections in order to disrupt the vote. «The IDF is ready both to defend and to strike», he said in a video recorded at an anti-ballistic missile battery, adding that opponents would «suffer disproportionate blows far greater than you can imagine».
In Saudi Arabia, King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh reopened terminals 1 and 2 for domestic and international flights. Iran-backed Houthi rebels in neighbouring Yemen nonetheless again fired drones and missiles towards the Saudi capital. The Saudi military spokesman, Major General Turki al-Malki, said air defences had intercepted and destroyed a ballistic missile and a drone. Debris from the interception of two ballistic missiles in the Khamis Mushait and Ahad Rafida governorates wounded two people, a Saudi citizen and a resident from an unspecified Asian country, and damaged three buildings and seven vehicles, the Civil Defence said. Earlier in October, Houthi strikes hit an airport complex housing two other terminals, killing 17 people and wounding more than 330.
Humanitarian and detention issues also featured in the day's developments. The International Committee of the Red Cross has begun receiving lists of Palestinian detainees from the West Bank and Gaza again, an ICRC spokesperson confirmed, after Israel's Supreme Court earlier this year ordered the government to resume sharing them. The government had suspended both the lists and ICRC prison visits after the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023 and the start of the war in Gaza. ICRC spokesperson Gilad Grossman said Israel had not yet allowed prison visits to resume but that the organisation hoped they would restart in the near future. Around 9,000 Palestinians are still imprisoned or detained under harsh conditions, according to the reporting.
Elsewhere, Israeli strikes in Gaza killed seven people, according to Palestinian hospital officials, including two brothers in Khan Younis. The Israeli military did not immediately comment. The Gaza Health Ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, says more than 1,500 Palestinians have been killed since a ceasefire began a year ago, and that women and children make up nearly half of the dead. Pope Leo XIV called for an end to fighting in Yemen and warned of worsening conditions for more than one million residents of Taiz besieged by Houthi rebels, where food, water and medical care are in short supply.
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