President Trump ratcheted up pressure on Iran to negotiate as war raged across the Middle East on Thursday, and Israel said it had killed an Iranian naval commander who played a pivotal role in shutting down the Strait of Hormuz.
Mr. Trump, who began the day by writing on social media that Iran “better get serious soon,” said at a cabinet meeting later that if Tehran did not negotiate “we’ll just keep blowing them away.”
Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s special envoy, said that he and Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, had received “strong signs” from Iran that peace was possible after sending a 15-point “action list” to Tehran through Pakistani mediators.
“We will see where things lead and if we can convince Iran that this is the inflection point with no good alternatives for them, other than more death and destruction,” Mr. Witkoff said at the cabinet meeting, in his most extensive public comments since the president asserted on Monday that talks were underway.
Mr. Trump also said that Iran, as a gesture of good will, had let 10 vessels pass through the strait, the critical gateway for oil and gas that has emerged as Iran’s key leverage point.
The naval commander that Israel said it had killed, Alireza Tangsiri, had been leading Iran’s effort to close the strait to almost all shipping traffic. It was not immediately clear what effect Mr. Tangsiri’s death would have on Iran’s strategy in the strait. Iran, which did not immediately comment on the claim that he had been killed, said this week that it would allow “nonhostile” ship traffic through the narrow waterway.
Mr. Tangsiri also oversaw the navy’s testing of drones and cruise missiles, according to the U.S. Treasury, which imposed sanctions on him in 2019 and 2023. And he chaired the board of a company that manufactured and tested drones for the Iranian Navy, the Treasury said.
The Israeli military said on Thursday that it had also struck military targets in Isfahan, in central Iran. It did not mention Iran’s largest nuclear research center, which is in Isfahan.
But Iran continued to exhibit a measure of military resilience, launching missiles and drones toward Israel and nations on the Persian Gulf. The Israeli military said it had identified eight missiles from Iran on Thursday, and at least seven people were wounded in central Israel in the barrages, according to the country’s emergency service.
Bahrain’s Interior Ministry reported a fire because of “Iranian aggression,” and Saudi Arabia’s Defense Ministry and the Kuwait National Guard said they had intercepted drones, without saying where they had come from.
Pakistan’s foreign minister confirmed on Thursday that his country had been facilitating back-channel communications between the United States and Iran, including the 15-point proposal.
But whether direct talks will result remains an open question. Pakistani officials did not say whether they would soon host any high-level foreign officials and appeared to play down the prospect of formal talks between the two sides.
Diplomats said that Mr. Trump’s peace plan calls for what would amount to a complete termination of Iran’s nuclear program and strict limits on its missile arsenal. Iran, for its part, said in comments carried on state television on Wednesday that it would not end its attacks unless the United States paid war reparations and recognized Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz.
“They’ll tell you, ‘We’re not negotiating,’” Mr. Trump said of Iran. “Of course, they’re negotiating. They’ve been obliterated.”
He denied reports that he was hurriedly pushing his staff to end the war, portraying himself as unrushed and unruffled. “I’m the opposite of desperate,” Mr. Trump said. “I don’t care. We have other targets before we leave.”
He declined to comment on whether there were plans to extract Iran’s nuclear materials by force — “I can’t talk about it,” he said — and he acknowledged the asymmetry of the war, saying that even if the United States knocked out nearly all of Iran’s military capabilities, leaving “1 percent is unacceptable.”
“One percent is a missile going into the hull of a ship that costs a billion dollars,” he said, referring to Iran’s capacity to attack vessels traversing the Strait of Hormuz.
Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, has said that U.S. warplanes had damaged or destroyed more than two-thirds of Iran’s missile, drone and naval production facilities and shipyards since the war started.
Mr. Trump told reporters he didn’t know whether he would extend a Friday deadline for Iran to fully open the strait. He had threated that the United States would “obliterate” power stations if the strait were not reopened. Mr. Trump said a deadline extension would depend on what his negotiators reported back.
One of Iran’s largest energy plants, the Bushehr nuclear power plant, is operated with the assistance of Russian engineers. Alexey Likhachev, head of Rosatom, the Russian atomic energy corporation, said on Thursday that Russia planned to carry out “several rounds of personnel evacuations” from Bushehr.
The Trump administration was confronted on Thursday with another pressure point in the war: the worsening effects on the global economy. The price of 10-year Treasury notes, a measure that Mr. Trump appears to have followed closely in previous crises, fell markedly as he spoke. And a related measure, the average 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage rate climbed to 6.38 percent, the highest level since the first week of September.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a group of wealthy countries that compiles data and analysis on the global economy, said the war in Iran would lead to a surge in inflation worldwide this year.
The inflation rate in the United States will average 4.2 percent this year, more than 1 percentage point higher than the previous forecast late last year, the Paris-based organization said. Across the Group of 20 nations, it said, inflation is forecast to average 4 percent this year, 1.2 percentage points higher than previously expected.
In a sign of growing fuel shortages in Asia, Japan, the largest consumer of Gulf petroleum products, began releasing oil from its national reserves on Thursday.
The human toll in the war continued to climb. The Human Rights Activists News Agency, based in Washington, has reported more than 1,440 civilians killed in Iran. The country has not publicly updated the toll since March 11, when it stood at more than 1,300.
Almost 1,100 people in Lebanon have been killed, the authorities there said on Wednesday. At least 16 people have been killed in Iranian attacks on Israel, officials said. One man was killed in the northern Israeli city of Nahariya on Thursday, according to emergency services, after a volley of rockets from Lebanon. The American death toll stands at 13 service members.
The Israeli military has expanded its ground operation against the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon “one step further,” Maj. Gen. Rafi Milo, the commander of Israel’s Northern Command, told troops on Thursday, according to a military statement He said Israel troops had so far killed more than 750 people he described as “terrorists,” and had “destroyed infrastructure all across Lebanon.”
Earlier on Thursday, the military said it had deployed a third division to southern Lebanon, while troops from a fourth division had carried out ground operations there.
Reporting was contributed by Natan Odenheimer, Ronen Bergman, Yeganeh Torbati Johnatan Reiss, Ismaeel Naar and Elian Peltier.
Erica L. Green is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
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