By Parisa Hafezi, Phil Stewart and Raphael Satter
DUBAI/WASHINGTON, July 26 (Reuters) - 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.
Resuming major combat operations remains an option, but General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has cautioned privately to Trump that it would carry risk given the negative impact on stocks of munitions, the official said. That includes interceptors used by U.S. air defenses in the Middle East, the official added.
Caine's office and U.S. Central Command declined comment. U.S. military officials have traditionally declined to comment on their private advice to a sitting U.S. president, even in testimony to Congress.
On NBC's "Meet the Press," Waltz said the U.S. military "has everything that it needs," but also said that when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth took over under the Trump administration, he "inherited a depleted situation."
The senior Iranian source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Tehran did not hold much hope that Trump's decision to pause strikes represented a major shift in the U.S. negotiating position.
"There is more scepticism than optimism about the halt in attacks. The prevailing view is that the pause is tactical rather than genuine. Iran has accumulated enough bitter experience with what it sees as U.S. deception," the source said.
'STUCK IN LIMBO'
For the past two weeks, U.S. forces had been striking Iran nightly in what Washington said was retaliation for Iranian attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian forces have responded to the U.S. attacks by launching strikes at water desalination plants in nearby Gulf Arab states.
Iran says it aims to retain control of the strait, through which a fifth of global oil flows passed before the war.
The renewed U.S. military campaign effectively torpedoed last month's interim agreement aimed at ending the war.
Trump's decision to pause the strikes followed what several media outlets described as a meeting on Friday where Caine and other senior military and political advisers raised concerns.
CNN said Vice President JD Vance had expressed reservations. Axios reported that the overall commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, Admiral Brad Cooper, had advised halting the U.S. bombing campaign because it had reached the limits of its effectiveness.
Residents of Iran remain apprehensive. Nader, 49, an import-export business owner in Tehran, said he doubted any pause in strikes would last.
"Everyone in the country is stuck in limbo," he told Reuters by telephone. "Trump is playing games with Iran. He neither ends the war and leaves the region nor strikes decisively. It's exhausting."
(Writing by Raphael Satter and Peter Graff; Editing by Alexander Smith, Ros Russell and Sergio Non and Deepa Babington)
