US President Donald Trump said the Iran ceasefire is on ‘life support’ after he rejected Tehran’s latest proposal to end the war.
Officials said the proposal included some concessions on Iran’s disputed nuclear programme, but Trump dismissed it as ‘garbage’.
The stalled talks and recent exchanges of fire could tip the Middle East back into open warfare and prolong the energy crisis.
Iran still has a chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, and America’s blockade of Iranian ports is still in place.
Asked at an unrelated White House event if the ceasefire was still in place, Trump said it is ‘unbelievably weak’ and on ‘life support’ before talking about the recent peace proposal from Iran.
‘I would call it the weakest right now after reading that piece of garbage they sent us,’ Trump added. ‘I didn’t even finish reading it.’
Trump is expected to use a trip this week to China to urge President Xi Jinping to pressure Iran. Beijing is the biggest buyer of Iran’s sanctioned crude oil, giving it leverage.
But the US and Iran remain far apart on a host of issues. Trump has demanded a major rollback of Iran’s nuclear activities, while Iran is pushing for a more limited agreement that would reopen the Strait and lift the blockade ahead of further negotiations.
Two regional officials said that Iran has offered to dilute part of its highly enriched uranium and transport the rest to a third country. Russia has previously offered to take it.
Still, Trump has demanded that the nuclear material be removed completely, and is unlikely to accept other Iranian proposals for the formalisation of its control of the strait and for US reparations.
Trump said on Sunday that Iran’s response to his latest proposal was ‘TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!’
Ending the blockade before discussing Iran’s nuclear programme would eliminate a major point of leverage for Trump.
In the meantime, the standoff over the Strait, which is a key transit point for the world’s oil and natural gas exports, has sent fuel prices skyrocketing and rattled world markets.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who launched the war with Trump on February 28, has kept insisting that the conflict was ‘not over’.
The US and Israel have killed dozens of high-ranking Iranian officials, including the country’s supreme leader, in the opening salvos of the war, and the conflict has inflicted heavy damage to Iran’s economy, but its theocracy maintains its grip on power.
Iran’s proposal asked that the US recognise its sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, formalising its control over the international waterway.
Iran has effectively closed the Strait since the start of the war, allowing only a small number of ships to pass and charging tolls.
But experts say such an arrangement would likely violate international law that provides for freedom of navigation.
That proposal is also likely to be widely rejected by the international community, as the strait was open to international traffic before the war.
Iran is also demanding war reparations from the US, the lifting of international sanctions, the unfreezing of Iranian assets held abroad and an end to the war between Israel and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah, according to Iranian state TV.
Israel and Hezbollah have continued to exchange blows, mainly in southern Lebanon, since a nominal ceasefire took hold last month.
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