Blasts head in northeastern Iran city of Mashhad

Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said on Wednesday that the United States is sending messages to Tehran through multiple intermediaries but stressed that such exchanges do not amount to negotiations.

“Exchange of messages via mediators does not mean negotiation with the United States,” he said.

Araghchi added that Iran’s top authorities are reviewing proposals that have been conveyed but said Tehran has no intention of holding talks with Washington.

Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi called on regional countries to distance themselves from the United States and from what he described as US aggression against Iran.

“They did not even condemn it. The first thing expected was at least a verbal condemnation,” Araghchi said.

“Our message is that they should separate themselves,” he added.

Araghchi said Iran had warned regional countries, but they “did not take it seriously.”

The “present” US President Donald Trump said Iran had given Washington was allowing several fuel tankers to pass safely through the Strait of Hormuz, The Times of Israel reported, citing a senior Arab diplomat and a US official.

Trump said on Tuesday that Iran had given the United States a “present” worth a “tremendous amount of money,” without providing details, but described it as related to oil and gas and the strategic waterway.

The report cited an unnamed US official as saying that when Washington began passing along messages to Iran through mediators over the weekend in order to test whether a diplomatic off-ramp to the war was possible, it asked Tehran to make a gesture of goodwill.

In response, Iran agreed to allow a number of fuel tankers that weren't tied to the US or Israel through the Strait of Hormuz in order to help calm global markets, the report added citing an an unnamed Arab official.

The White House said on Wednesday that US Vice President JD Vance has been involved in national security discussions related to Iran throughout the entirety of the Trump administration.

“The vice president has been by the president’s side every step of the way, and any reporting otherwise is just completely false,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.

Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said intelligence indicates Iran’s enemies, backed by a regional country, are preparing an operation to occupy one of Iran’s islands.

“All enemy movements are under the surveillance of our armed forces,” Ghalibaf wrote in a post on X.

"If they take even a single step, the vital infrastructure of that regional country will be targeted by relentless attacks without limitation"