Iranian State Media Says Talks With US Suspended as Missiles Fired at US Forces During Ceasefire

President Donald Trump’s ongoing negotiations to end the war in Iran hit a roadblock on Monday as Iranian state media said Iran had suspended negotiations over Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Lebanon, following heavy rocket fire from Hezbollah into Israel.

CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer broke the news in the morning, saying, “We begin this hour with breaking news. The U.S. says Iran targeted U.S. forces in Kuwait. The U.S. Military Central Command also says it carried out self-defense strikes in Iran over the weekend. And all of this comes as we just learned that Iran says it’s suspending talks with the United States. CNN’s Alayna Treene is over at the White House. CNN International diplomatic editor Nic Robertson is standing by for us in London. We have team coverage of all of this as well. Alayna, let me go to you first. What more are we learning right now about the ballistic missiles targeting U.S. forces based in Kuwait?”

“That’s right. We have this information from a statement from CENTCOM, which, of course, handles the Middle Eastern region. They essentially said that Iran launched two ballistic missiles targeting American forces in Kuwait early Monday morning local time. The military said that those missiles — both of them — were intercepted and that no American personnel were harmed,” Treene reported, adding:

This is, of course, rattling the already very shaky ceasefire, and follows more strikes we saw the last few days exchanged between the United States and Iran. But I think there’s a part of this statement that you have up on your screen right now, Wolf, that is very crucial to all of this. In this statement from CENTCOM, they say: “U.S. Central Command remains vigilant and will continue to protect our forces from Iranian aggression while supporting the ongoing ceasefire.”

So the word from CENTCOM today was that despite these attacks on American forces in Kuwait — which, again, they say no American personnel were harmed — they were arguing that that was not a violation yet of this ceasefire, similar to what we saw following the exchange of fire between Washington and Tehran over the last 24 hours or so.

However, I think we are hearing a new threat to this very fragile ceasefire from Iran today. You mentioned it, but Iranian state media coming out and saying that they are suspending talks with the United States in protest of Israel’s strike in Lebanon. Now, this is something I have of course gone to my sources about. I’m trying to figure out what the U.S. response — the response from the Trump administration — is to all of this. But I can tell you, the latest we had heard prior to this statement from Iranian state media was that the president remained committed to a deal. Even as we’re seeing this exchange of fire between the United States and Iran, they are still pushing toward wanting to strike some sort of agreement on that memorandum of understanding. We know the president had sent over some proposed changes over the weekend. We’ll have to see where this stands now, given Iran’s reaction to what is happening between Israel and Lebanon, Wolf.

Blitzer followed up, “All right, stand by, Alayna. I want to go to Nic Robertson right now. Nic, as you heard Alayna just mention, Iran says it’s suspending talks with the U.S. in protest of Israel’s strikes in Lebanon. What more are you learning?”

“Yeah, I’ve been speaking to a source familiar with the talks, perhaps in the half hour or so — quite literally — before Iranian state media broke the news that the Iranians were breaking off their negotiations with the United States at this time because of Israel’s actions against Hezbollah inside Lebanon,” reported Robertson, adding:

This source, about half an hour prior to that, had told me — when I’d asked how the talks were going; they’d previously described it as a sort of ping-pong, word for word, sentence for sentence, that’s how it had been going over the weekend — the word to describe it today was “complications,” and it appears we’ve hit one of those complications. It’s not clear how significant the consequences are going to be. Iran is saying that as part of the broader ceasefire deal with the United States, it was absolutely conditional that there should be a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and that was something President Trump several weeks ago put to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to achieve.

That was in place, but over the past few days and hours, Prime Minister Netanyahu has decided to strike deeper at Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, going closer to the capital Beirut. So the reaction from Iran is to say: no more talks. They’re also saying that they’re going to completely close down the Strait of Hormuz — it seemed pretty close by their accounts anyway, but they’re adding further emphasis on that. And they’re also talking about closing down the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which is one of the routes out of the region for oil through the Red Sea. Does this lead to military escalation? It’s a lot more tenuous than it was before, Wolf.

Watch the clip above via CNN.

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