WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday dismissed Iran’s latest proposal to end the three-week war between the U.S. and Iran, calling Tehran’s leadership “fractured” and saying he remained unsatisfied with the terms delivered through Pakistani mediators a day earlier.
“They want to make a deal, I’m not satisfied with it, so we’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters at the White House, without detailing what he found lacking in the plan. Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency had reported late Thursday that Iran handed its proposal to intermediaries in Pakistan.
The rejection came as the ceasefire that took effect April 7 appeared to still be holding, though both countries have traded accusations of violations. But the attention remains focused on the Strait of Hormuz, where a U.S. Navy blockade is preventing Iranian tankers from exporting oil, battering Iran’s economy, while Iran maintains a chokehold on the waterway, disrupting global oil and gas supplies. In normal times, a fifth of the world’s traded oil and gas passes through the strait.
Trump added that the U.S. faces two stark choices. “I mean, 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? I mean, those are the options,” he said, after a briefing with Adm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command. The president said he believes Iran’s leadership has made progress toward unifying, but added: “They’ve made strides, but I’m not sure if they ever get there. There’s tremendous discord, they’re having a tremendous problem getting along with each other in Iran.”
Diplomatic efforts continued on multiple fronts. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi spoke by phone Friday with counterparts from Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Azerbaijan to brief them on Iran’s initiatives, according to his social media accounts. European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas also called Araghchi to discuss efforts to reopen the strait and establish longer-term security arrangements, her office said.
Pakistan’s former ambassador to Washington, Masood Khan, noted that the back-and-forth proposals signaled both sides are still seeking a diplomatic middle ground, though fears of resumed military action remain high given the harsh rhetoric each has directed at the other.
Elsewhere, the war’s human toll continued to mount. An explosion of leftover cluster bombs and air-dropped mines killed 14 members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard near the northern city of Zanjan, according to IRNA and the Nournews website, which is believed to be close to Iran’s security establishment. It was the largest single Guard death toll reported since the truce began.
Since the war erupted on Feb. 28, more than 3,375 people have been killed in Iran and over 2,600 in Lebanon, where renewed fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah broke out two days later, authorities have reported. An additional 24 people have died in Israel, more than 20 in Gulf Arab states, 17 Israeli soldiers in Lebanon, and 13 U.S. service members across the region.
In a parallel development underscoring Iran’s domestic rights situation, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi was rushed from prison to a hospital in northwestern Iran after her health suffered a “catastrophic deterioration,” the Narges Mohammadi Foundation said Friday. The group said she experienced two episodes of total loss of consciousness and a severe cardiac crisis, adding that the transfer came after “140 days of systematic medical neglect” since her arrest in December. Mohammadi, 53, a noted human rights lawyer who won the prize in 2023, is serving a seven-year sentence.