United States President Donald Trump has rejected a roadmap submitted by Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz within a week.
“I reject their proposal,” Trump told reporters outside the White House on Saturday, before departing for Tennessee by helicopter.
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Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Friday that Tehran formally submitted a seven-day roadmap to the US via mediator Qatar, and was awaiting Washington’s response.
“It appears as though the proposal is dead in the water,” said Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, reporting from Washington, DC.
Late on Friday, US media reports indicated Trump would reject the proposal.
Trump was “privately sceptical” that Tehran would meet his demands, and reportedly told aides that he expects a renewed bombing campaign on Iran after the November US midterm elections, The Wall Street Journal reported, quoting unnamed US officials.
“President Trump has vacillated between extreme optimism, saying that ‘talks are going well’ to ‘I want to annihilate Iran’,” Hanna said about the recent diplomacy between Washington and Tehran.
“There is no consistency in terms of the [Trump] administration’s reaction,” he said.
But “the one thing that has been made clear by President Trump is that he is content to stay in the status of limbo”, Hanna added, despite concerns from much of the American public that the Iran conflict is turning into another “never-ending war”.
The Strait of Hormuz, a waterway key to the world’s oil supply, is central to the conflict between the US and Iran, which is at an impasse after nearly seven months, though new mediation efforts took place this week.
Earlier in the week, Araghchi held talks with Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, and previously set out conditions for ending the war and reopening the vital shipping channel.
On Friday, the top Iranian diplomat said: “Iran has conveyed to the United States, through Qatar, a concrete seven-day plan. If the necessary conditions are met, the strait can be reopened, and normal maritime passage restored within seven days.”
He was speaking at the United Nations in New York, where he and other senior Iranian officials were attending the General Assembly.
Under the plan, Washington would lift its naval blockade of Iranian ports, waive sanctions on Iranian oil sales, release an estimated $12bn in frozen Iranian assets and observe a ceasefire covering the region, including Lebanon and Yemen.
“The choice now rests with the United States. Iran does not accept coercion, threats or intimidation, and Iran will not surrender its sovereign rights under pressure,” Araghchi had said.
On Saturday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told Al Jazeera that Tehran no longer trusts negotiations with the US after previous rounds of talks were followed by attacks and sanctions.
“We have no trust in the American side and do not know on what basis an understanding can be reached with it,” said Pezeshkian, who was also in New York for the UNGA.
He denied that Iran was responsible for blocking the Strait of Hormuz, saying the US “closed the routes before us”. He described the closure as “a natural response when routes are cut off to Iran”.
The Iranian president said the crisis could be resolved through negotiations rather than force, and that the waterway would reopen to commercial shipping if talks ended the war.
