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WASHINGTON — <\/span>WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump<\/a> started the fourth week of his war against Iran by offering the world some guarded optimism that the U.S. could soon be winding operations down<\/a>, a claim that markets cheered<\/a> but Iranian officials dismissed as a ploy to buy time for a conflict that is causing economic pain around the globe.<\/p>\n In a social media message timed before markets opened, Trump said he was putting off for five days plans he announced over the weekend to bomb Iran’s power plants<\/a> unless Tehran opened the Strait of Hormuz<\/a> by Monday evening. The critical passageway for some 20% of the world’s crude has been effectively shuttered during the war, sending oil and gas prices soaring. <\/p>\n He decided to hold back on targeting Iran’s critical infrastructure, Trump explained, because his envoys, son-in-law Jared Kushner<\/a> and Steve Witkoff<\/a>, had \u201cvery good\u201d talks over the weekend with unnamed \u201crespected\u201d Iranian officials on ending hostilities. <\/p>\n The president made no mention of Iran’s vow that vital infrastructure across the Gulf region \u2014 including energy and desalination facilities<\/a> critical for drinking water \u2014 would be considered legitimate targets and \u201cirreversibly destroyed”<\/a> if Trump acted on his threat. The back-and-forth drove a steep selloff in Asian markets as the clock ran down on Trump\u2019s ultimatum.<\/p>\n \u201cAll I\u2019m saying is we are in the throes of a real possibility of making a deal,\u201d Trump said during an extended exchange with reporters before boarding Air Force One on Monday morning to make his way from his home in Florida to an event in Memphis, Tennessee. \u201cAnd I think, if I were a betting man I\u2019d bet for it. But again, I\u2019m not guaranteeing anything.\u201d<\/p>\n Before the president’s plane had landed in Tennessee, less than two hours later, Iran refuted there had been any high-level communications with the White House and dismissed Trump’s rhetoric as a thinly veiled attempt to manipulate jittery global markets.<\/p>\n \u201cNo 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.\u201d<\/p>\n The Iranian Foreign Ministry also said Trump\u2019s statement was nothing more than an effort \u201cto reduce energy prices and to buy time for implementing his military plans.\u201d<\/p>\n If Trump were to end the war now, he would be walking away from the fight at a moment when he still hasn’t fully achieved his stated objectives, some regional analysts have noted.<\/p>\n Over the course of the the past few weeks, Trump has offered shifting reasons<\/a> for launching the war as Democrats accuse him of needlessly shaking the global economy and polls at home show that Americans are divided along party lines<\/a> about the conflict.<\/p>\n But the president has settled on a list of goals he has said must be achieved, including degrading Iran\u2019s missile capability, destroying its defense industrial base, eliminating the Iranian navy, preventing Iran from ever acquiring nuclear weapons<\/a>, and securing the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n The U.S. and Israeli air bombardment has made progress on some of those goals. But analysts say Trump would strain credulity if he were to claim, at this point, that he made good on achieving his aims \u2014 particularly definitively ending Iran’s ability to build a nuclear bomb. <\/p>\n