Iranian official claims lull in US strikes due to 'strategic fatigue'

Iranian officials have sought to paint the apparent pause in strikes by the United States as a victory, with one military spokesman saying the US had failed to dent Iran’s defenses and was suffering from strategic fatigue.

The comments to Iranian state media outlets on Sunday follow reports that US Vice President JD Vance and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine both raised concerns about escalating the war in Iran during a White House meeting on Friday.

The US military has not announced any fresh strikes for the last two nights – after nearly two weeks of consecutive nights of attacks.

Operations are “on a hold,” a Department of Defense source told CNN on Saturday.

“We still cannot identify any clear strategy on the part of the Americans,” Iranian army spokesman Amir Akraminia told Iranian state television on Sunday, asserting the US was “experiencing strategic decision-making fatigue.”

The US had failed to force open the Strait of Hormuz or weaken or destroy Iran’s defensive capabilities, Akraminia said.

He added, “We now see that the geography of the war has extended to Bab al-Mandeb,” in the Red Sea, where the Iranian-backed Houthis have declared a blockade of Saudi shipping.

A spokesman for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Brig. Gen. Hossein Mohebi, claimed that Israel was “trying to keep the United States in the region by provoking the US president and providing him with false information.”

Earlier this month Israel was reported to have provided the US with intelligence on an assassination plot against Trump.

Mohebi claimed that in the last two weeks Iran had destroyed a wide variety of US military facilities across the region. The US has acknowledged damage to some facilities, such as in Jordan, where three US soldiers were killed in one strike.

-CNN