Trump far more keen to end war than Iran: John Lyons | ABC NEWS

The U .S.Ambassador to the United Nations says President Donald Trump is giving peace talks some space by pausing attacks on Iran.It's the second night of reprieve after the U .S.military conducted 13 consecutive nights of bombing Iranian targets.

Iran has confirmed talks with Omani mediators over the weekend were productive, but Ambassador Mike Waltz says the U .S.is ready to restart its strikes if necessary.

We are locked and loaded.Even more assets are going into theater.But he's giving talk some space.He's giving it a little bit of room.We've had both Iman and Iran and a number of our other negotiators engaged at every level from the most senior levels all the way down to the technical level over the past few weeks and particularly in the past few days.

For more, we're joined by America's editor, John Lyons.Morning, John.Thank you.Now, the US president, we know, has been mulling an escalation in the Iran conflict.As outlined there, though, we've had a pause in these daily attacks.

What's happening here?Well, Gemma, what's happening here is it's like a mini ceasefire within a ceasefire.It's a lull more than anything.The last 12 or 13 nights, the United States has been bombing Iran again.That's in response to Iran hitting one or two of those ships that were trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.And so there was a danger it was going to escalate into full scale war again.

That hasn't happened.It's not to say that it won't happen.But what's happening now is I think both sides the US and Iran both want a breather.They are trying to, there are all sorts of back channels and negotiations going on, as there often is in this sort of situation, but this is basically a way of the United States, they've sort of used the stick of those 12 days of hitting Iran and a lot of its military facilities, but those strikes were quite tactical, they were very focused on military assets,and in return the Iranians were hitting, targeting at least, they didn't always get the missile through because of the anti -missile and defence systems of the Gulf states, but it was very much a contained conflict within a conflict.So those talks might continue, there is some sort of positive noises out of this, but I think we've learnt that you can't place too much stress or in the idea of anything happening in a hurry.

I think my own analysis is that the Americans' President Trump is far more keen to bring an end to this war than the Iranian, than the regime in Tehran, who sees that Donald Trump is hurting politically and wants to make him hurt as much as they can to try to extract the best possible deal at the end of this war.

Well, picking up on that, John, there has been some talk that this pause is about US munitions supply.Is that correct?

Well, the American media is reporting that on Friday, only two or three days ago, there was an important strategy meeting at the White House attended by, apart from the president, the vice president, J .D.Vance, and importantly, the chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, General Dan Cain, who is the head of the military and has quite a lot of credibility in this town.And the suggestion was that both Vice President Vance and General Dan Cain both warned against any escalation, both warned Donald Trump against what he keeps saying about a massive increase in the hostilities here.J .D.

Vance's argument reportedly was that, as it was a few months ago when this war started, let's not forget J .D.Vance is in a fascinating position here.He's the only major official at the top of the White House who warned against this war and said, listen, you don't know where wars in the Middle East can end.reportedly, against a further escalation.And General Kane is reported to have said that, expressed concern about the depletion of United States capability, because this has been going on since February 28.

There's been a lot of munitions, missiles, drones, et cetera, expended.And there's a limit to how much the United States can expend on a war that they didn't necessarily expect and that they chose to go into.

What has Iran been saying or doing in response?How are they perhaps spinning this?

Well Iran in response has likewise ceased attacking some of those Gulf countries and they're saying that you know we will if you want to have a lull then we will have this lull and we will engage in negotiations so Iran is also holding fire at least for the last day or two.

John, Ukraine, we know of course, is fighting their own war.They've been helping some of the defensive efforts for US allies in the Gulf, now taking a bit more of a direct role.Can you tell us about that and how you're interpreting this shift?

Well, Gemma, there's a fascinating subtext going on here involving Ukraine.For Ukraine, this has unexpectedly been an opportunity.Now, the way that's worked is that the Russian missiles or the Russian drones that they've been using to attack Ukraine for the last three or four years have largely been made in Iran.Iran is famous for their so -called Shaheed drones.Now, the Ukrainians have developed their own drone industry, and one area where the Ukrainians are demonstrably better than the Russians on the battlefield is in drone technology.On one of my trips to Ukraine two or three years ago, I went to some of these drone factories inside Kyiv.

There's dozens of them all around the Ukraine, and they are coming up with all sorts of drones and conversions.For example, fertiliser drones that farmers use for crops are now being repurposed in all of these factories, some of which I went to, into combat drones so they can connect explosives underneath this fertiliser drone.And they've got medical drones.and surveillance drones and all sorts of drones that can go deep into Russia.So the Ukrainians have very smartly, in my view, said to the Gulf states of Kuwait and UAE and Bahrain and others, listen, you're under attack from Iranian drones.Why don't we help you?

Why don't we give you some of our anti drone systems and technology?We'll help you defend yourself.And of course, in return, what we would like is a lot of your energy, your oil, because energy is such an important important part now of the war between Russia and Ukraine.aspect of this war in Iran, how Ukraine's stocks in the Middle East are going up all the time.