Iran War Live Updates: U.S. and Iran Send Conflicting Signals on Peace Prospects

The speaker of Iran’s Parliament denied on social media that any such negotiations were underway, accusing Mr. Trump of issuing false statements to calm rattled energy markets. Iranian officials said their country would continue to fight.

But the Iranians and the Americans were exchanging messages through intermediaries about de-escalating the conflict, with the immediate goal of averting attacks on critical energy infrastructure, according to four Iranian officials and an Iranian diplomat. The officials spoke anonymously to discuss sensitive negotiations.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, after speaking with Mr. Trump, did not state whether peace talks were being held, but said that his American counterpart believed it was possible to “leverage” the military achievements to “realize the objectives of the war in an agreement.” Mr. Netanyahu, in a video statement, said Israel would pursue its campaigns against Iran and its ally in Lebanon, Hezbollah.

Whatever the truth about possible negotiations, the war continued to rage on multiple fronts. The U.S. and Israeli militaries said on Monday that they had carried out fresh waves of strikes on Iran, and Israel continued its offensive in Lebanon. Iran claimed attacks on Israel and Persian Gulf countries, though it was not clear if any of them penetrated air defenses.

Mr. Trump said that a son-in-law of his, Jared Kushner, and his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, were leading negotiations, and that the United States was communicating with one of Iran’s leaders, without naming the person. He said the U.S. side was demanding an end to Iranian nuclear enrichment and elimination of the country’s uranium stockpiles that could be used to one day make a bomb, terms that Iran had previously rejected.

Three officials said Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, and Mr. Witkoff had spoken on the phone in recent days, but they said those were preliminary discussions on de-escalation and should not be characterized as negotiations.

The war’s global fallout has seen the price of oil and gas rise sharply since late February — a crisis that is now worse than the oil shocks in 1973 and 1979 combined, according to the head of the International Energy Agency.

Mr. Trump’s statement about talks with Iran immediately reduced energy prices somewhat, but it was unclear how long that could last without tangible progress toward ending the war. The president has repeatedly given optimistic assessments that temporarily eased market jitters, only to have prices rise again.

More than 2,000 people have been killed since the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran that ignited the conflict more than three weeks ago, most of them in Iran and Lebanon, where Israel has fought a second front with Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group.

Here’s what else we’re covering:

• Israel: Israel’s military faced scrutiny on Sunday about Iranian missiles that hit Dimona, a city eight miles away from Israel’s main nuclear facility, and the nearby city of Arad on Saturday night. More than 10 people were seriously injured and dozens more hurt in the strikes, renewing concerns that Israel might be holding back on using its most sophisticated air defenses to avoid depleting them. The Israeli military said on Monday that its own errant artillery had killed an Israeli avocado farmer a day earlier near the Lebanese border. In a statement, the military apologized to the victim’s family and to the community of Misgav Am, the small farming cooperative where he lived.

• Attacks in Lebanon: The Israeli military said early Monday that it had hit the Dallafa Bridge in southern Lebanon, the latest in a series of strikes on vital transit routes that Israel said were used by Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed armed group. Monday night, the Israeli military said that it was targeting Hezbollah infrastructure in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, where residents reported hearing explosions.

• Qatar: A remote work mandate in Qatar, which was put in place earlier this month amid the war, has been terminated, Qatar’s state news agency reported in the early hours of Tuesday morning in the Middle East. Qataris in the public and private sectors will returne to in-person work on Tuesday, it said.

• Death tolls: Iran’s U.N. ambassador said that at least 1,348 civilians had been killed in the country since the start of the war — a toll that has not been updated for over a week. On Friday, a Washington-based group, the Human Rights Activists News Agency, reported that at least 1,398 civilians had been killed. More than 1,000 people in Lebanon have been killed, the authorities there said on Thursday. At least 15 people have been killed in Iranian attacks on Israel, officials have said. The American death toll stood at 13 service members.