- Trump says talks continue; Tehran says no progress has been made.
- Israel and Lebanon agree to implement a ceasefire.
- Kuwait says 63 injured in attacks and airport damaged.
US President Donald Trump has said talks with Iran could produce a result “over the weekend”.
“I’ve heard that the negotiation itself is going very well,” Trump said of a possible deal. “It could happen … over the weekend,” he told reporters at the White House on Wednesday.
Trump also said he wants to separate talks on the conflict in Lebanon between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah and those on the war between the United States and Iran, although Tehran insists the two are linked.
“I would like to separate it, I would like to have something separate, because it is separate,” he said.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium was at the center of talks with Tehran and expressed hope that the latest round of talks in Washington between Israel and Lebanon would produce a security road map.
Washington insists that Tehran must hand over its near-weapons-grade enriched uranium, agree to curb its nuclear activities and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the key shipping channel for Gulf oil and gas, for any peace deal to be cemented.
In contrast to optimistic comments from the United States, Iran’s foreign minister struck a pessimistic tone, saying that “no tangible progress has been made” in negotiations to end the Middle East war, as new attacks by the United States and Iran tested a fragile ceasefire.
Kuwaiti officials said the renewed hostilities included an Iranian drone attack on a passenger terminal at Kuwait International Airport that killed one person and injured 63.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said lines of communication with the United States were still open, but warned that any Israeli attack on the Lebanese capital, Beirut, as part of its campaign against Hezbollah would trigger a “large-scale resumption” of the conflict.
“Communications with the Americans have not been cut off and messages have been exchanged about the need to stop the aggression against Beirut, but no tangible progress has been made in the negotiation process,” he said. Tasnim The news agency quoted Araghchi as telling Lebanon Al Mayadeen TV.
“Any attack on Beirut will have serious consequences and will lead to a full resumption of the war,” he said. “Our armed forces are ready to attack Israel if it attacks Beirut.”
‘Playing with fire’
Kuwait’s military condemned the drone attack on the airport as an act of “Iranian criminal aggression.” India’s foreign ministry said the only fatality was an Indian citizen.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard denied attacking the airport, saying it was “an error in the American Patriot systems, which landed at the terminal after failing to intercept the Iranian missiles.” The Revolutionary Guards also accused US forces of provoking a response by attacking a tanker truck and a communications tower on the country’s Qeshm Island.
The new attacks constitute one of the harshest tests yet of the April 8 ceasefire that halted more than a month of war sparked by the US-Israeli bombing of Iran, and which has largely held despite sporadic exchanges of fire.
Trump downplayed the renewed hostilities, saying that “in that part of the world, the ceasefire is when you fire in a more moderate way.”
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Iran of “playing with fire.”
“Iran surely knows what the (American) president has said that, if necessary, there will be a full-scale return to military action,” Netanyahu said in an interview with the American channel CNBC.
Kuwait suspended air traffic and diverted planes arriving to other destinations after the drone attack on the airport, but later restarted Kuwait Airways flights.
The international airport has been attacked several times during the war and did not fully resume operations until Monday.
Hassan Sheikh, a 40-year-old Pakistani resident of Kuwait who lives near the airport, said he heard explosions throughout the night, adding: “For the first time, my children felt how serious the situation was.”
