Trump says talks with Iran will start Monday on deal to reopen Hormuz

US President Donald Trump says negotiations with Iran will begin on Monday to finalize a deal that reopens the Strait of Hormuz after he again called off a major attack on the Islamic Republic over the weekend.

“We’re talking to them in the form of a negotiation. It begins tomorrow afternoon, and we’ll see if it’s [good]. I’d love to do that. We’d save a lot of lives, save a lot of unnecessary power,” Trump tells reporters aboard Air Force One.

When he announced the latest walk-back of a threat to conduct a massive bombing campaign against Iran on Saturday, Trump claimed a deal with Iran to reopen Hormuz and “end” its nuclear threat.

Now, he declines to even give a timeline for when such a deal will be reached and says negotiations will only start tomorrow, even though mediators have been discussing such a deal for weeks.

He didn’t specify on Saturday which countries, besides Iran, had asked him not to launch the major bombing campaign, but he now identifies them as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. That contradicts reporting from the Wall Street Journal, which said the UAE actually wanted Trump to escalate against Iran.

Almost every time Trump has walked back threats to bomb Iran, he has claimed it was countries in the region that asked him not to go ahead, rather than suggest his own advisers didn’t think it would be a good idea.

“We were all set to go at this time right now, and it would have been a massive attack… but [then] the allies asked to call it off… The reason they ask is they think there’s a deal. There’s a deal on Hormuz, and then there will be a deal on the denuclearization of Iran,” Trump says, appearing to walk back his claim on Saturday that the deal on the table would address both Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear program.

His latest comments suggest that the nuclear file won’t be addressed until a subsequent deal, and that this first deal regarding Hormuz is only being made in order to restore the memorandum of understanding that was inked in June. That MOU gave the sides 60 days to reach a deal on Iran’s nuclear program, but now there are less than 30 days left in that window.