Iranian media reported on early Tuesday that energy-related facilities in central and southwestern Iran were struck, hours after United States President Donald Trump said Washington would delay any military action against Iranian power infrastructure for five more days.
According to reports carried by Fars News Agency, a semiofficial outlet considered close to Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, two energy sites were hit in separate incidents. The strikes were reported in the central province of Isfahan and the southwestern city of Khorramshahr.
Fars said a gas administration building and a gas reduction structure in Isfahan were struck, causing damage to parts of the facilities as well as to nearby residential homes. In a separate incident, the agency reported that a projectile landed outside a gas pipeline linked to a power plant in Khorramshahr, a city near Iran's border with Iraq and Kuwait.
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This comes hours after Trump extended his deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, saying the US will hold off striking Iranian power plants for five more days.
Trump said US envoys have been holding talks with a 'respected' Iranian leader, and Iran wants 'to make a deal.' Iranian officials denied any such negotiations, and declared that the American leader had backed down 'following Iran's firm warning.'
Trump also said the US would seek to retrieve Iran's enriched uranium and end its nuclear programme as part of a deal, telling reporters, "We want to see no nuclear bomb, no nuclear weapon. Not even close to it."
Iran has denied any high-level communications with the White House dismissing Trump's rhetoric as a thinly veiled attempt to manipulate jittery global markets. "No negotiations have been held with the US," Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, the speaker of Iran's parliament, posted on X. "And fakenews is used to manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped.”
The Iranian foreign ministry also said Trump's statement was nothing more than an effort “to reduce energy prices and to buy time for implementing his military plans.”
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