Attacks continue amid conflicting accounts of 'talks'

Iran and Israel continued exchanging strikes on Tuesday, even as United States President Donald Trump announced a five-day pause on strike threats and hailed "very good" talks with an unidentified Iranian official — a claim Tehran immediately dismissed as a ploy to depress energy prices and buy time for military planning.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel will continue to strike Iran and Lebanon to protect its "vital interests" even as the US weighs a ceasefire.

Following a phone call with Trump on Monday, Netanyahu released a video statement, saying Trump believes there is an opportunity to build on the major gains of the joint US-Israeli attack on Iran to achieve the war's goals through a diplomatic agreement.

"(But) we are crushing the missile and nuclear programs, and we continue to strike Hezbollah hard," he said, adding that two more Iranian nuclear scientists were recently killed.

Iran fired multiple waves of missiles at Israel on Tuesday, triggering air raid sirens. Israel, meantime, pounded southern suburbs of Beirut in Lebanon. Israel's military said on Tuesday its fighter jets had carried out a large wave of strikes in central Tehran on Monday, targeting key command centers.

Oil prices briefly fell below $100 a barrel after Trump claimed his government was in talks to end the war. But that respite was short lived, with the price of Brent crude, the international standard, back to $104 a barrel in morning trading, up more than 40 percent since Israel and the US started the war on Feb 28.

Asian markets traded higher on Tuesday, tracking gains in Europe and on Wall Street in the aftermath of Trump's announcement.

US news website Axios, citing an unnamed Israeli official, identified Trump's interlocutor as Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of Iran's parliament. The outlet and Reuters further reported that US negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner could meet an Iranian delegation for talks in Pakistan as early as this week, with US Vice-President JD Vance potentially joining.

But Ghalibaf said on Monday that "no negotiations" were held with the US. "Fake news is used to manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped," he said in a post on X.

Esmail Kowsari, a member of the Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said the US and Israel were seeking to stoke division.

"We must act wisely. Their nature is to sow discord to erode public trust in officials and fabricate the appearance of such actions, when none have occurred," he was quoted as saying by the semiofficial Fars news agency.

Trump's extension of the deadline came as a contingent of thousands of US Marines is en route to the region, due to arrive by Friday, fueling speculation that Washington may attempt to seize Kharg Island — a strategic Iranian oil hub off its coast.

"As Trump has in the past, he could be moving military assets into place, in this case to prepare for an invasion and seizure of Kharg Island, while using negotiations as a cover until those assets are fully combat-ready," wrote the New York-based think tank the Soufan Center in an analysis.

Tehran had vowed to strike power and water infrastructure across the region in retaliation, threatening to escalate an energy crisis of already historic proportions.

Danny Citrinowicz, a security analyst and former Israeli intelligence expert on Iran, wrote on X: "Trump blinked first — out of clear recognition that striking Iran's energy infrastructure would trigger direct and severe retaliation."

While some view the five-day pause as offering a window for potential talks, experts warned that common ground between the US and Iran remains elusive given deep-seated distrust.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said messages were received from "some friendly countries indicating a US request for negotiations aimed at ending the war", but denied any such talks had taken place, Iran's official IRNA agency reported on Monday.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Ross Harrison, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, pointed to Trump's 2018 "betrayal" of Iran — when he withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal and imposed crippling maximum sanctions on Tehran.

"Then last June, near the end of negotiations, Israel and the US launched attacks on Iran; and again, a few weeks ago, we saw the same pattern," he said.