President Donald Trump said Monday that the U.S. ceasefire with Iran was “on life support” after he received what he called Tehran’s “garbage” response to a U.S. proposal for ending the war.
“It’s unbelievably weak,” Trump said of the Iranian reply. “After reading that piece of garbage they sent, I didn’t even finish reading it. … I would say the ceasefire is on massive life support.”
His comments to reporters at the White House came a day after Trump branded Iran’s response “totally unacceptable.”
The latest exchange between Washington and Tehran follows hostilities around the Strait of Hormuz in recent days that highlighted the fragility of a ceasefire the two sides reached more than a month ago.
Oil prices rose and stocks were mixed early Monday, with Brent crude, the global benchmark, up more than 3 percent to nearly $105.
In a news conference Monday carried by Iranian state media, Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei defended the Iranian proposal as “reasonable and generous” and called on the United States to meet Iran’s demands: “ending the war, lifting blockades, halting maritime piracy, freeing frozen assets and ensuring security in the Strait of Hormuz and security in Lebanon and the region.”
Iranian news outlets indicated that the proposal was similar to Tehran’s position during the previous negotiating exchange: calling for an official end to the war, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, withdrawal of all naval vessels enforcing a U.S. blockade, lifting of U.S. sanctions, an effective ceasefire in Lebanon, and an additional 30 days of talks to iron out the details. Iran has proposed that all discussion of its nuclear program be the subject of subsequent negotiations.
Trump, in a separate Truth Social post on Sunday, accused Iran of “playing games with the United States” and of “laughing at our now GREAT AGAIN Country. They will be laughing no longer!”
The Iranian document was in response to a 14-point proposal transmitted earlier this month by the Trump administration that included nuclear program demands.
Trump said Monday that “two days ago” Iran had agreed to allow the U.S. to enter Iran and remove what he calls nuclear “dust” — the canisters holding more than 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium gas that was buried in underground caverns during U.S. bombing in June.
“Just to put it on the record,” Trump said, “they said to me, ‘There are only two countries in the entire world that could ever get that stuff out of there … China and the United States, because we don’t have the equipment.’”
“We were going to go with them” to unearth the material, he said, “but they changed their mind because they didn’t put it in the paper.” In the U.S. proposal that Trump said Tehran had agreed to earlier, “they guarantee no nuclear weapons for a very long period of time and a couple of other minor things … so they agree with us, and then they take it back.”
Iran has said there has been no agreement on nuclear issues.
During a visit to Italy on Friday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he hoped Tehran would present a “serious offer.”
Rubio’s comments came as U.S. warplanes struck two Iranian-flagged tankers that U.S. Central Command said were attempting to violate its naval blockade by entering an Iranian port along the Gulf of Oman — one in a series of recent clashes in the region even as Trump and military officials said the ceasefire was still in place.
Iran attacked three U.S. naval destroyers Thursday in what it said was retaliation for their entry into the strait — over which Iran claims control — and a U.S. attack on an Iranian merchant vessel the day before. Tehran claimed it inflicted serious damage on the destroyers with ballistic and cruise missiles and drones, while the U.S. said the ships had sailed away unscathed. U.S. warplanes subsequently attacked sites on Qeshm Island near the Iranian coast and the nearby city of Bandar Abbas.
On Saturday, Rubio and Steve Witkoff, the White House’s special envoy to the Middle East, met with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani to discuss the efforts to end the Iran war, according to a statement from Mohammed’s office.
The group also talked about the Pakistani mediation “aimed at reducing escalation that contributes to enhancing security and stability in the region,” the statement said.
The State Department said in a statement that Rubio and Mohammed discussed “the importance of continued close coordination to deter threats and promote stability and security across the Middle East.”
On Sunday morning, Qatar’s defense ministry said that a commercial cargo vessel coming from Abu Dhabi was struck by a drone off the coast of Doha, causing a small fire. Later in the day, Qatar said Mohammed spoke by telephone with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
Speaking on ABC News’s “This Week” on Sunday, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said he believes negotiations are going “longer and slower” partly because Iran’s “leadership has been so devastated and fractured.” Asked about the Strait of Hormuz’s continued closure, Mike Waltz said: “That’s why we’re pushing now another U.N. resolution that says Iran cannot do this. No country can do what Iran is doing in international waterways.”
AWashington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll conducted in late April showed that Trump’s war in Iran is as unpopular among Americans as the Iraq War was during the year of peak violence in 2006 and the Vietnam War in the early 1970s.
Sixty percent of Americans say the U.S. military action has increased the risk of the economy going into a recession, according to the poll. More than 4 in 10 say gas prices are causing them to drive less and cut household expenses, while more than 3 in 10 say they have changed travel or vacation plans. Six in 10 Americans report at least one of these impacts.
Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad, Pakistan, contributed to this report.
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