Ammon News - The US president has shared several AI-generated images on his Truth Social platform, apparently portraying the seizure of an Iranian oil tanker and a strike on Iran’s Kharg Island oil export terminal.

One image shows Trump on board a tanker flying a US flag, and another shows fighter jets bombing the Kharg facility.

"It's our oil tanker now!", Trump wrote.

Some observers interpreted the images and accompanying comment as a signal that the U.S. president seeks control over Iranian oil if an agreement is not reached to end the war and restore freedom of international navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran will halt its own ​attacks as long as the United States does the same, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Sunday. The development comes as the United States pressed ‌pause on its bombing campaign after President Donald Trump's advisers told him they were running out of targets and expressed worries about depleting the U.S. arsenal.

After 13 nights of intensifying U.S. airstrikes on Iran, the Pentagon suspended the campaign late on Friday, with no U.S. attacks reported on either Saturday or Sunday. Iran, which had been following each night of U.S. attacks with its own strikes ​on neighbouring countries that host U.S. bases, has also so far held fire for two days.

The Iranian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Tehran's position "remains ‘attack ​for attack’: if the attacks stop, Iran will also halt its operations. That message has already been conveyed to the United ⁠States."

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, told "Fox News Sunday" and other U.S. media that Trump had decided to pause U.S. attacks to allow more time for diplomacy.

"He's ​giving talks some space, he's giving it a little bit of room," Waltz said, without providing further details.

U.S. military officials in recent days have cautioned that bombings over the ​past two weeks meant to deter Iranian threats to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz — a narrow waterway that has become a key flashpoint in the war — had largely exhausted the pre-selected sets of targets, one U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.



Aljazeera+ Reuters