![\"Government](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/government-supporters-hold-iranian-flags-and-pictures-of-ira-4YDA5QZWNFF5NMBIHDDGA23XKY.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe US military said that it carried out \u201cself-defence\u201d strikes in southern Iran, including on missile launch sites and boats placing mines, even as President Donald Trump said on social media that negotiations were \u201cproceeding nicely”.<\/p>\n
The strikes were done \u201cto protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces,\u201d but the military was \u201cusing restraint during the ongoing ceasefire,\u201d Capt. Tim Hawkins, US Central Command spokesman, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Further details were not immediately available, including more specifics on the threats from Iran and what this means for negotiations. <\/p>\n
Earlier, Trump said any agreement to end the Iran war should include a requirement for several additional countries, including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, to join the Abraham Accords, the US-brokered agreements from Trump\u2019s first term aimed at normalising relations with Israel.<\/p>\n
The proposal came as the emerging Iran deal faced criticism from fellow Republicans who favour a harder line on Iran, and it could add new diplomatic complications to the negotiations.<\/p>\n
Trump pointed to Saudi Arabia and Qatar as countries that should \u201cimmediately\u201d sign on, alongside Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan. Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates became the first countries to join in 2020.<\/p>\n
He wrote that \u201cafter all the work done by the United States to try and pull this very complex puzzle together, it should be mandatory that all of these Countries, at a minimum, simultaneously, sign onto the Abraham Accords”.<\/p>\n
Trump has long hoped Saudi Arabia would join, but the kingdom has maintained that any normalisation deal required first establishing a clear path for Palestinian statehood. That’s also key for Pakistan, which is among the countries that do not have diplomatic relations with Israel.<\/p>\n
Islamabad-based analyst Syed Mohammad Ali said Pakistan\u2019s position on Israel remained unchanged despite Trump\u2019s latest proposal.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Government supporters hold Iranian flags and pictures of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n
The president said he brought up the Abraham Accords plan with leaders during negotiations on Saturday. He said he would accept \u201cone or two\u201d countries declining to sign, but said most should be willing. Egypt and Jordan already formally recognise Israel and have long-standing peace treaties. Turkey first recognised Israel in 1949.<\/p>\n
Masood Khan, Pakistan\u2019s former ambassador to the United States, said it remains to be seen how workable the proposal might be for the countries on Trump’s list.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe invocation of the Abraham Accords at this stage gives an altogether new dimension to the diplomatic and mediatory processes because this issue was not on the agenda,\u201d he said, pointing to the domestic pressure Trump was facing to strike a favorable deal.<\/p>\n
Still, Khan said, \u201cthe diplomatic track is still working, and I believe Pakistan is very much at the center of it, supported by regional countries.\u201d<\/p>\n
It remains unclear when or how any deal with Iran might be completed. Trump suggested even Iran could eventually sign on to the accords, if an agreement was reached.<\/p>\n
The accords are a series of diplomatic, economic and security agreements created with US influence during Trump\u2019s first term, originally between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, followed by Sudan, Morocco, and, more recently, Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n
They were framed as an effort to promote cooperation among countries in the Middle East and North Africa, and the administration saw them as partly paving a path toward full ties with Israel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US military said that it carried out \u201cself-defence\u201d strikes in southern Iran, including on missile launch sites…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":445322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[65,42,5107,43,64,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-445321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-north-america","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}