Iran’s Ambassador to Pakistan Reza Amiri Moghadam said in Islamabad on Jan. 15 that U.S. President Donald Trump informed Tehran that he will not attack the country and asked that Iran also exercise restraint, reported DAWN. The Iranian envoy also disclosed that he received information at around 1 a.m., which indicated that Trump did not want war and had asked Iran not to attack the U.S. interests in the region.
For his part, on Jan. 14 Trump told reporters at the White House: “We’ve been told that killing in Iran is stopping—it has stopped. That has just gotten to me, some information, that the killing has stopped, that the executions have stopped.” He also alluded to the report of the death sentence for Erfan Soltani, saying “they are not going to have an execution, which a lot of people were talking about for the last couple of days. Today was going to be the day of execution.” He said that he hoped what officials had been told was true. When asked if military action was off the table, he responded: “We’re going to watch it and see what the process is, but we were given a very good statement by people that are aware of what’s going on.”
In Riyadh, a senior Saudi official, not named, told AFP that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Oman led efforts to talk Trump out of an attack on Iran, fearing “grave blowbacks in the region.” The Persian Gulf trio “led a long, frantic, diplomatic last-minute effort to convince President Trump to give Iran a chance to show good intention,” the official said.
