A senior Iranian military officer yesterday said renewed fighting with the US was “likely,” hours after US President Donald Trump said he was not satisfied with an Iranian negotiating proposal.
Iran delivered the new draft to mediator Pakistan on Thursday evening, state media reported, without detailing its contents.
The war, launched by the US and Israel in late February, has been on hold since April 8, with one failed round of peace talks having taken place in Pakistan since then.
Photo: EPA
“At this moment I’m not satisfied with what they’re offering,” Trump told reporters, blaming stalled talks on “tremendous discord” within Iran’s leadership.
“Do we want to go and just blast the hell out of them and finish them forever — or do we want to try and make a deal?” he said, adding that he would “prefer not” to take the first option “on a human basis.”
Iran’s Fars news agency quoted Mohammad Jafar Asadi, a senior figure in the Iranian military’s central command, as saying that “a renewed conflict between Iran and the United States is likely.”
“Evidence has shown that the United States is not committed to any promises or agreements,” he added.
Iran’s judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei said his country had “never shied away from negotiations,” but would not accept an “imposition” of peace terms.
The White House has declined to provide details on the latest Iranian proposal, but news site Axios reported that US envoy Steve Witkoff had submitted amendments to a previous one putting Tehran’s nuclear program back on the negotiating table.
The changes reportedly include demands that Iran not move enriched uranium from bombed sites or resume activity there during talks.
News of the Iranian proposal briefly pushed oil prices down nearly 5 percent, although they remain about 50 percent above pre-war levels amid the ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran has maintained a stranglehold on the strait since the war began, choking off major flows of oil, gas and fertilizer to the world economy, while the US has imposed a counter-blockade on Iranian ports.
Speaking at a rally on Friday, Trump said “we’re like pirates” as he described an earlier helicopter raid on an oil tanker under the blockade.
In Iran, the war’s economic toll is deepening.
Washington has imposed new sanctions on three Iranian currency firms and warned others against paying a “toll” for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, as demanded by Iran.
The US military said its blockade of Iranian ports has stopped US$6 billion in Iranian oil exports, while inflation in Iran, already high before the war, has surged past 50 percent.
“Everyone is trying to endure it, but ... they are falling apart,” 40-year-old Tehran resident Amir said. “We still have not seen much of the economic effects, because everyone had a bit of savings. They had some gold and dollars for a rainy day. When they run out, things will change.”
Meanwhile, Iranian authorities yesterday executed two men convicted of spying for Israel, the judiciary said, the latest in a string of recent executions.
One of the men was found guilty of assisting Israel during last year’s 12-day war.
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