US President Donald Trump on Monday called for a “pause on all military strikes” against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for five days. Tehran denied talks took place and claimed the pause had come after it warned of targeting the energy infrastructure across the Gulf, calling it a “defeat for the devil”. It said the “US had backed down”.Speaking to reporters in Florida, Trump said the US was currently engaged in high-level discussions with a “top person” within the Iranian leadership in an effort to secure a resolution to the West Asia conflict. He clarified that the negotiations did not involve new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei. An Israeli official said the US was holding negotiations with Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Qalibaf.The pause announcement saw Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, falling more than 7 per cent to around $104 a barrel–it was $65 before the war started on February 28.Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform that the US and Iran had had “very good and productive” conversations over the past two days about a “complete and total resolution of hostilities in West Asia”.The White House said in a post on X the pause was “subject to the success of the ongoing meetings and discussions”. However, Iran’s Fars News Agency, which is affiliated with the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, quoted a source as saying there had been “no direct or indirect contact between Tehran and Washington”.Iran’s Mehr News Agency quoted the country’s Foreign Ministry as saying Trump’s statement of the pause “was part of efforts to reduce energy prices and buy time to implement his military plans”.Before the change of tactics, Trump had on Sunday threatened Iran of “obliterating” its energy network if it did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours. “Based on the tenor and tone of these in-depth, detailed and constructive conversations, which will continue throughout the week, I have instructed the Department of War to postpone any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for a five-day period, subject to the success of the ongoing meetings and discussions,” Trump posted on Truth Social.Shortly before Trump’s post, Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi wrote on X that his country was “working intensively to put in place safe passage arrangements” for the Strait of Hormuz. “Whatever your view of Iran, this war is not of their making. This is already causing widespread economic problems and I fear they promise to get much worse if the war continues,” wrote Albusaidi, who had mediated the latest nuclear talks between Iran and the US.Albusaidi had on Wednesday said the US-Israel’s “unlawful” war on Iran was “a grave miscalculation”, which put the Gulf economies in harm’s way. “This is not America’s war, and there is no likely scenario in which both Israel and America will get what they want from it,” he wrote.Hours before Trump’s announcement, Israel launched a new fresh of attacks against Iran’s infrastructure sites. Al Jazeera said an “unprecedented” volume of explosions were launched on the eastern side of Iran. Iran’s Fars News Agency said seven persons were killed in the strikes on residential areas in Khorramabad and Tabriz.On Sunday night, Tehran too renewed its attack on its Gulf neighbours. In Israel, Iranian missile strikes continued overnight with falling shrapnel reported across several locations in southern and central parts of the country.Iran’s death toll in the war has surpassed 1,500 while 15 persons have been killed in Israel by Iranian attacks.Meanwhile, western analysts have raised questions about Israel’s air defence system Iron Dome after the nuclear facility and reactor in southern Negev Desert was hit by Iranian missiles. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who visited the impacted sites, said it was a “miracle” that nobody had been killed in the attacks. He, however, did not offer any explanation why the air defence system — in which Israel and the US have invested billions of dollars for decades — failed to intercept the Iranian attack.