U.S. President Donald Trump discussed a new Iranian proposal on resolving the war with Tehran with his top national security aides on Monday, as the conflict remains in a stalemate with energy supplies from the region reduced.
Iranian sources earlier on Monday disclosed Tehran’s latest proposal, which would set aside discussion of Iran’s nuclear program until the war is ended and disputes over shipping from the Gulf are resolved. That is unlikely to satisfy Washington, which says nuclear issues must be dealt with from the outset.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he thought Iran was trying to buy more time. “We can’t let them get away with it,” he said in an interview with Fox News.
“They’re very good negotiators. They’re very experienced negotiators. We have to ensure that any deal that is made, any agreement that is made is one that definitely prevents them from sprinting toward a nuclear weapon at any point,” Rubio said.
Work has not halted to bridge gaps between the U.S. and Iran, sources from mediator Pakistan said, despite the absence of face-to-face diplomacy after Trump called off a trip by his envoys over the weekend.
Hopes of reviving peace efforts have receded since the U.S. president scrapped a visit on Saturday by his envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, where Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi shuttled in and out twice over the weekend.
Araghchi also visited Oman over the weekend and went to Russia on Monday, where he met President Vladimir Putin and received words of support from a long-standing ally.
With the warring sides still seemingly far apart on issues, including Iran’s nuclear ambitions and access through the crucial Strait of Hormuz, oil prices resumed their upward march on Monday, hitting a two-week high.
The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow waterway that runs between Iran and Oman. At its widest point it’s about 100 km across and it’s the only seaway to get anything, including oil, from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean. Sal Mercogliano, a former merchant mariner who teaches courses in maritime history and runs the YouTube channel What’s Going On With Shipping, explains how this relatively tiny piece of geography came to have such an outside influence in the world.
Trump met his national security team on Monday morning.
“There was a discussion this morning that I don’t want to get ahead of, and you’ll hear directly from the president, I’m sure, on this topic very soon,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Araghchi told reporters in Russia that Trump had requested negotiations because the U.S. has not achieved any of its objectives.
Senior Iranian sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the proposal carried by Araghchi to Islamabad over the weekend envisioned talks in stages, with the nuclear issue to be set aside at the start.
A first step would require ending the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and providing guarantees that Washington cannot start it up again. Then negotiators would resolve the U.S. blockade and the fate of the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran aims to reopen under its control.
A shaky ceasefire is at risk as U.S. President Donald Trump orders his military to ‘shoot and kill’ any Iranian boat that may be laying mines along the Strait of Hormuz. That’s as Israeli and Lebanese envoys meet face-to-face in Washington to negotiate an extension to a separate ceasefire. Power & Politics asks Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand about where things stand in the war — and where Canada stands on possible violations of international law.
Only then would talks look at other issues, including a long-standing dispute over Iran’s nuclear program, with Iran still seeking some kind of U.S. acknowledgment of its right to enrich uranium for what it says are peaceful purposes.
In a sign that no face-to-face meetings are planned any time soon, streets reopened in Islamabad that had been locked down for a week in anticipation of talks that never took place.
Pakistani officials said negotiations were still taking place remotely, but there were no plans to convene a meeting in person until the sides were close enough to sign a memorandum.
Although a ceasefire has paused the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran that began on Feb. 28, no agreement has been reached on terms to end a war that has killed thousands, driven up oil prices, fuelled inflation and darkened the outlook for global growth.
Iran has largely blocked all shipping apart from its own from the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz since the war began. This month, the United States began blockading Iranian ships.
At least six tankers loaded with Iranian oil have been forced back to Iran by the U.S. blockade in recent days, ship-tracking data shows, underscoring the war’s impact on traffic.
Iran’s foreign ministry on Monday condemned U.S. seizures of Iran-linked tankers as “outright legalization of piracy and armed robbery on the high seas,” in a post on X.com.
Between 125 and 140 ships usually crossed in and out of the strait daily before the war, but only seven have done so in the past day, according to Kpler ship-tracking data and satellite analysis from SynMax, and none of them were carrying oil bound for the global market.
With his approval ratings falling, Trump faces domestic pressure to end the unpopular war. Iran’s leaders, though weakened militarily, have found leverage with their ability to stop shipping in the strait, which typically carries a fifth of global oil shipments.
Weekend violence in Lebanon
Fighting has intensified in Lebanon, where Israeli strikes killed 14 people and wounded 37 in the south on Sunday, according to the Health Ministry, making it the deadliest day since a U.S.-brokered ceasefire was agreed in mid-April.
Iran says it will not hold talks on the wider conflict unless a ceasefire also holds in Lebanon, which Israel invaded in March in pursuit of the Iran-backed group Hezbollah, which fired across the border in support of Tehran.
Israel and Hezbollah blame each other for violating the truce, which was agreed between Israel and the Lebanese government in Washington and extended last week.