Trump asserts Iran wants to ‘make a deal’.

People shop at the Tajrish Bazaar on the fourth day of Nowruz holidays in Tehran, Iran, on Tuesday, March 24, 2026. (Arash Khamooshi/The New York Times)

By GABBY SOBELMAN, YEGANEH TORBATI, NATAN ODENHEIMER and ERICA L. GREEN

President Donald Trump, speaking on a day in which Iran sent waves of missiles across the Middle East, said Tuesday that negotiations to end the war were still taking place and that the Iranians would like “to make a deal.”

Iran has maintained publicly that no negotiations are happening, but speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said not only that they were occurring but also that Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were involved.

Trump cast Iran as a nation so near military defeat that it had little choice but to negotiate, but the Iranians made clear Tuesday that they could still lash out across the region. Its missiles targeted Israel and Iraq, and Persian Gulf nations also reported new strikes — despite claims by U.S. and Israel officials that the Iranian ballistic missile program has been severely battered.

Israeli authorities said a direct hit in Tel Aviv caused extensive damage to at least three residential buildings. At least six people were treated for injuries in Tel Aviv, according to the national emergency service.

In the semiautonomous Kurdish region of Iraq, a volley of six Iranian ballistic missiles killed six Kurdish fighters and wounded 30 others, said the regional government, a U.S. ally.

And in Bahrain, an Iranian missile attack killed a Moroccan contractor working for the United Arab Emirates armed forces and injured five UAE service members, the UAE defense ministry said Tuesday.

Trump, asked why he appeared willing to consider a ceasefire with the Iranians, told a reporter: “They’re talking to us and they’re making sense.”

Though Iran has taken a public stance denying that negotiations are taking place, according to four Iranian officials and an Iranian diplomat, Tehran and Washington have been exchanging messages through intermediaries about deescalating the conflict.

Trump said that the vice president and the secretary state were joining negotiations that also include his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Steve Witkoff, one of his most senior advisers.

Trump dodged a question about a report in The New York Times that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was encouraging him to pursue the war. “He’s a warrior,” he said. “He’s fighting with us.”

Here’s what else we’re covering:

— Lebanon: Israel’s defense minister said its military would expand its occupation of southern Lebanon, retaining control of territory south of the Litani River. The waterway has long served as a geographic boundary in conflicts between Israel and Hezbollah. It is unclear whether Israel would deploy troops across the entire area or rely on its air force for some parts.

— Saudi Arabia: The kingdom’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed, has been pushing Trump to continue the war against Iran, according to people briefed by U.S. officials on the conversations.

— Group of 7: Rubio is set to travel to France on Friday to discuss the war and other topics with diplomats from the Group of 7 major industrialized nations.

— Death tolls: A Washington-based group, the Human Rights Activists News Agency, has reported that at least 1,443 civilians had been killed in Iran. More than 1,000 people in Lebanon have been killed, authorities there said Thursday. At least 15 people were killed in Iranian attacks on Israel, officials said. The U.S. death toll stood at 13 service members.

— Energy crisis: Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a conduit for a fifth of the world’s oil, along with recent attacks on oil and gas infrastructure in the Persian Gulf, had the international benchmark for crude oil trading above $100 Tuesday. The Philippines declared a state of national energy ​emergency, and South Korea is urging people to take shorter showers and to avoid charging phones and electric vehicles at night.

— Iran: A former Islamic Revolutionary Guard general, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, has been named as Iran’s top security official, an aide to the Iranian president announced Tuesday. He replaces Ali Larijani, who was killed in an Israeli attack last week.