U.S. Pauses Iran Strikes as Zelenskyy Alleges Russia Aided Targeting

The U.S. military let Friday night pass without launching new strikes on Iran, ending a run of 13 straight nights of attacks, even as the naval blockade of Iranian ports held firm and a fresh accusation from Ukraine's president added another layer of diplomatic entanglement to the widening conflict.

President Donald Trump signaled Thursday that Iran was growing more open to negotiations and that Tehran would "love to make a deal," but an Iranian military official pushed back publicly Saturday, declaring the war was "one that will not end" and going so far as to welcome a U.S. ground invasion. The dueling statements left the prospect of any peace talks thoroughly murky.

American allies in the region hosting U.S. troops had reported no new Iranian attacks as of Saturday, providing a brief respite in a conflict that has killed at least 18 American service members since fighting broke out. The recent toll includes three soldiers who died in an Iranian strike on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan and one who was killed during the controlled demolition of an Iranian drone in Iraq. Officials said nearly 100 other U.S. personnel have been wounded across several strikes this month.

Some advisers to Trump have urged caution about pushing toward a major escalation, citing in particular the shrinking inventory of air defense munitions available to U.S. forces and partner governments across the Middle East. A broader war, those advisers warned, could dangerously draw down those stockpiles.

The naval blockade, which was reimposed earlier this month, remained in force Saturday. U.S. Central Command said forces boarded a Comoros-flagged tanker in the Arabian Sea to check for compliance and then allowed it to proceed. A Mozambique-flagged vessel that defied the blockade and ignored repeated warnings was disabled in the Gulf of Oman. Since the blockade took effect, the military said it had turned back 12 commercial ships and disabled two that refused to stand down.

A significant new element surfaced Saturday when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy published detailed charges that Russia had been feeding Iran satellite imagery of U.S. military installations across the Middle East. Zelenskyy said Ukrainian intelligence had observed Russian satellites surveilling American air bases in Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait on July 19 and 20, and that the images subsequently turned up in Iran in what he called a clear link to later Iranian strikes. He said he planned to share the evidence with Washington.

The broad allegation itself was not without precedent. Several sources, including a senior U.S. official, had told reporters early in the conflict that Russia was supplying Iran with intelligence on American positions. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth acknowledged before Congress this week that adversaries were enabling Iranian operations, though he argued the full scope of that support should remain classified. Trump, however, contradicted Hegseth days later, posting on social media that neither Russia nor China was helping Iran, citing personal assurances from Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

A secondary front in the broader confrontation also showed signs of escalating. Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen announced Saturday that they had struck Saudi installations along the Red Sea coast, one day after Saudi Arabia carried out retaliatory airstrikes against the group in response to Houthi attacks on commercial shipping. The clashes were concentrated around the Bab al-Mandab strait, a key oil transit corridor already under strain from the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

An Omani diplomatic delegation arrived in Tehran on Friday for talks aimed at addressing the movement of vessels through Hormuz, state media reported, a sign that behind-the-scenes efforts to contain the conflict's spread were continuing even as hostilities raged across several fronts.