CAIRO — Mediators have achieved progress in getting the United States and Iran back to negotiations, regional officials said Monday, after both sides paused attacks following a period of rapidly escalating tensions. But scattered attacks by armed groups across the region underscored the lingering tensions. Saudi Arabia said it had shot down drones fired by Iran-backed militias in Iraq that had targeted its petroleum facilities. Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen meanwhile claimed to have attacked Saudi oil facilities as part of a separate but related conflict. It was unclear if they referred to the same attack.Two drone attacks were reported against a Kurdish Iranian dissident group in Iraq, and Jordan said it had shot down two drones, without saying where they originated. There were no reports of casualties or damage.Neither the U.S. nor Iran reported carrying out any attacks for three days — a respite after about two weeks of sustained bombardments that had led to increasing fears of a return to all-out war.The two regional officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door talks, said mediators led by Qatar and Pakistan were working to bridge the gap between Washington and Tehran to return to an interim ceasefire deal that had collapsed after the exchanges of fire.The U.S. has paused attacks after targeting Iranian coastal areas and infrastructure in a nearly two-week escalation sparked by Iran’s firing at ships trying to transit the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for global oil shipments.President Trump is “giving talks some space. He’s giving it a little bit of room,” Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told Fox News. Waltz dismissed the idea that the U.S. stockpile of interceptors crucial in defending against Iranian attacks is running low, but experts have questioned how long both the U.S. and Iran can afford to keep up attacks.Iran halted its attacks following the American pause, Tehran’s army spokesperson told Iranian state TV on Sunday. Tehran in recent days has counterattacked against countries in the region hosting U.S. military forces, killing at least three service members at a base in Jordan and one in Iraq.One of the regional officials who spoke to AP on Monday described the progress made in mediation efforts as “significant.” He said mediators were working with Iran and Oman on a mechanism for managing vessels’ transit through the Strait of Hormuz, the flashpoint for the latest strikes and counterstrikes. Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, said during a news conference in Tehran on Monday that “mediators may convey messages to us from the American side” but that there were no direct negotiations.He said Iran and Oman, which lies on the other side of the Strait of Hormuz, had already held talks on Friday and Saturday on how to manage ship traffic through the waterway.Concerns have grown about shipping through another crucial waterway in the region, the Bab al-Mandeb strait to the Red Sea. The Houthis last week threatened a blockade of Saudi shipping there, and fired on at least one Saudi tanker, setting it alight.Magdy and Becatoros write for the Associated Press.
