US officials say negotiations with Iran to resume
Senior U.S. officials say negotiations between the U.S. and Iran are set to continue after Iranian officials privately acknowledged firing on ships in the Strait of Hormuz was a "mistake."
"They have come back to us and asked for further talks to try to settle some of the issues," the official said. "We are hoping to get to a place where they publicly say that they will stop shooting at ships and sort of explicitly or at least implicitly acknowledging that they screwed up. We're working on that now."
The senior U.S. official later added, "So they came back to the table and said, 'We screwed up. We made a mistake. Let's keep talking.'"
The U.S. official added that Trump "has directed" teams to talk but added if Iran "keep on shooting at ships or if they engage in any other hostile act, then we're going to hit them back."
The other U.S. official also offered insight into those strikes on ships in the Strait of Hormuz, saying it came from "an errant part" of the Iranian system that "was trying to undermine the deal."
Another official noted that the strikes illustrated the fractured Iranian political system.
"We have a lot of options if the hardliners get the upper hand. But we continue to have some confidence that the rational people in their system will be able to rein in those hardliners. You never know. You can't predict the future," the U.S. official said.
Despite those increased hostilities, a different senior U.S. official said that they think, "Iran is showing a lot of signs of wanting to make this deal."
-ABC News' Michelle Stoddart
Editor's note: This post has been updated




