Donald Trump has rejected Iran’s response to the US’s latest ceasefire proposal.
‘I have just read the response from Iran’s so-called “Representatives”. I don’t like it — Totally Unacceptable! Thank you for your attention to this matter,’ the President wrote in a Truth Social post yesterday afternoon.
The Trump administration’s latest proposal addressed a deal to end the war, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and roll back Iran’s nuclear program.
The rejection came as US Ambassador to the UN Mike Walz told Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream: ‘We’re seeing the world align with us.’
‘Iran has shown its true colors. Yet President Trump is giving diplomacy a chance, backed by our great US military,’ he added.
Tehran wants to end the war on all fronts – including in Lebanon, where Israel is fighting the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group – and to ensure the security of shipping, Iranian state TV said.
The country’s supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not been seen or heard publicly since the war began, ‘issued new and decisive directives for the continuation of operations and the powerful confrontation with the enemies’ while meeting with the head of the joint military command, the state broadcaster added.
Trump has reiterated threats to resume full-scale bombing if Iran does not accept an agreement to reopen the strait and roll back its nuclear program.
President Donald Trump in Davos, Switzerland, for this year’s World Economic Forum meeting
A woman holds the Iranian flag as she stands infront of an anti-US billboard referring to Trump and the Strait of Hormuz, installed on a building at the Valiasr Square in Tehran yesterday
An explosion of what appears to be white phosphorus fired by the IDF on the Lebanese side of the Israel-Lebanon border as seen from the Israeli side of the border
Iran has largely blocked the strategic waterway that’s key to the global flow of oil, natural gas and fertilizer since the war began, rattling world markets.
The US military in turn has blockaded Iranian ports since April 13, saying it has turned back 61 commercial vessels and disabled four.
On Friday, it struck two Iranian oil tankers it said were trying to breach the blockade. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard navy says any attack on Iranian oil tankers or commercial vessels would be met with a ‘heavy assault’ on U.S. bases in the region and enemy ships.
‘Any attack on Iranian tankers and commercial vessels will result in a heavy attack on one of the American centers in the region and enemy ships,’ the Iranian Revolutionary Guards said.
Another sticking point in negotiations is Iran’s highly enriched uranium. The UN nuclear agency says Iran has more than 440 kilograms (970 pounds) enriched up to 60% purity, a short, technical step from weapons grade.
In an interview posted late Saturday, an Iranian military spokesman said forces were on ‘full readiness’ to protect sites where uranium is stored.
‘We considered it possible that they might intend to steal it through infiltration operations or heli-borne operations,’ Brig. Gen. Akrami Nia told the IRNA news agency.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in an excerpt of an interview with CBS airing on Sunday, said the war isn’t over because the enriched uranium needs to be taken out of Iran.
Marines are seen here on the deck of the USS Tripoli in images shared by US Central Command
Marines rappel from an MH-60S Sea Hawk while training on the flight deck of USS Tripoli
‘Trump has said to me, “I want to go in there”, and I think it can be done physically,’ he added.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that Moscow’s proposal to take enriched uranium from Iran to help negotiate a settlement remains on the table.
The majority of Iran’s highly enriched uranium is likely at its Isfahan nuclear complex, the International Atomic Energy Agency director-general told The Associated Press last month.
The facility was hit by US-Israeli airstrikes in the 12-day war last year and faced less intense attacks this year.
Israel is already lining up fresh strikes on Iran should the deal collapse, with senior Iranian officials and the country’s energy infrastructure squarely in the crosshairs, an Israeli source told CNN.
The bombardments had been ready for execution on the eve of the ceasefire agreed in early April and were accelerated again this week after Iranian missiles were fired toward the United Arab Emirates on Monday.
Netanyahu, wary of Tehran’s peace overtures from the outset, is said to favor ‘a short campaign aimed at pressuring Iran into further concessions in negotiations’, the source added.
