US President Donald Trump gestures and speaks to reporters after arriving on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, on May 15, 2026.
Alex Roblewski AFP | Getty Images
President Donald Trump announced on Monday that he would cancel plans to attack Iran on Tuesday after leaders of regional powers asked for a “delay.”
In a post on Truth Social, President Trump said that in response to requests from Qatar’s Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, he informed U.S. military leaders that “there will be no attack on Iran scheduled for tomorrow.”
Prior to President Trump’s post, there were no clear signs that the United States was preparing to attack Iran on Tuesday and formally abandon the country’s tattered ceasefire. In an interview with the New York Post earlier Monday, President Trump said Iran knew “what’s going to happen soon,” but gave no details.
President Trump is considering resuming aggressive military operations after Iran’s latest response in ongoing negotiations over a deal to end the war has been deemed insufficient, Axios reported.
“We were preparing to launch a very large attack tomorrow,” Trump said at a White House event Monday afternoon.
“I’ve put it off for a while, hopefully forever, but maybe for a little while,” he said. “We’ve had very big talks with Iran, so we’ll see how that goes.”
President Trump said he had been asked by multiple countries to postpone the impending attack on Iran “for a short period of two or three days because we believe we are very close to an agreement.”
He added that if Iran is satisfied with the deal without nuclear weapons, “we’ll probably be happy too.”
In a post on Monday, President Trump claimed that the three regional leaders asked for a postponement of the planned attack because “serious negotiations are currently underway and, in the opinion of our great leaders and allies, will result in an agreement that is very acceptable not only to the United States, but also to the countries of the Middle East and beyond.”
“Importantly, this deal includes keeping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon!” Trump wrote.
The president said he had told Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Kaine that Tuesday’s strikes would be called off, but that they should “be prepared to immediately launch a full-scale, large-scale attack on Iran if an acceptable agreement cannot be reached.”
Hegseth traveled to Kentucky on Monday to attend a political event with Republican House candidates running against incumbent Republican Rep. Thomas Massey, who President Trump is trying to oust from Congress.
The United States and Iran are locked in a kind of military and economic stalemate centered on the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait of Hormuz is a globally important oil shipping route, and a wartime blockade has prevented most ships from passing through it.
The battle for control of the strait has seriously frayed an already fragile ceasefire, which started about six weeks ago and is still nominally in effect, but it has been interrupted by fighting multiple times and President Trump last week said it was on “life support.”
