Iran handed its response to the Trump administration’s latest cease-fire proposal to Pakistani intermediaries on Sunday, May 10, 2026, state media reported, in the newest exchange of a conflict that has paralyzed the Persian Gulf’s commercial waterways since late February. Within hours, President Donald Trump took to social media to reject the reply as “totally unacceptable!” — a declaration that left diplomats without a clear next step.
Iranian state television said Tehran considered the U.S. proposal tantamount to surrender and insisted instead on “war reparations from the United States, full Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, an end to sanctions, and the release of seized Iranian assets.” The latest U.S. offer had addressed ending the war, reopening the strait, and reversing Iran’s nuclear program, according to the wire report. Trump’s rejection of the response did not include details, though he had earlier posted that Iran had been “playing” with the United States for nearly fifty years and warned, “They will no longer laugh.”
“We’re giving diplomacy every chance we can before returning to hostilities,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz told ABC News.
Iran’s newly elevated supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not been seen or heard publicly since the war began, “issued new and decisive directives for the continuation of operations and the powerful confrontation with the enemies” while meeting with the head of the joint military command, state television reported, without providing further specifics.
The fragile pause in large-scale hostilities was tested Sunday when a drone started a small fire on a vessel off the coast of Qatar, and both the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait reported drones entering their airspace. The UAE said its forces downed two drones and blamed Iran. No casualties were reported, and no party claimed responsibility for the incidents. Qatar’s Foreign Ministry called the ship attack “a dangerous and unacceptable escalation that threatens the security and protection of maritime trade routes and vital supplies in the region.” The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center provided no details on the vessel’s owner or origin.
Brigadier-General Saud Abdulaziz Al Otaibi, a spokesman for Kuwait’s Defense Ministry, said military forces responded to the drones but did not identify where they came from. Iran and allied armed groups, including the Lebanese political-paramilitary organization Hezbollah, have used drones to carry out hundreds of strikes since the war began on February 28, 2026, with a U.S.-Israeli offensive.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to resume large-scale bombing if Iran does not accept a deal to reopen the strait and reverse its nuclear program. Tehran has largely blocked the strategic waterway — a conduit for a large share of global oil, natural gas, and fertilizer shipments — since the war began, jolting world markets. In turn, U.S. forces have blockaded Iranian ports since April 13 and said they have turned back 61 commercial vessels and disabled four. On Friday, U.S. forces struck two Iranian tankers that Washington said were attempting to violate the blockade. The naval arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard responded by warning that any attack on Iranian tankers or commercial vessels would be met with a “strong attack” on U.S. bases in the region and on enemy ships.
The other principal sticking point in negotiations is Iran’s stock of highly enriched uranium. The International Atomic Energy Agency says the country holds more than 440 kilograms (970 pounds) of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity — a short technical step from weapons-grade material. In an interview published Saturday night, Iranian military spokesman Brigadier‑General Akrami Nia told the state-run IRNA news agency that the armed forces were “fully prepared” to protect the sites where the uranium is stored. “We consider it possible that they might try to steal it through infiltration operations or helicopter-borne operations,” he said.
In an excerpt of a CBS interview broadcast Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the war is not over because the enriched uranium needs to be removed from Iran. “Trump told me, ‘I want to go in there,’ and I think it can be done physically,” Netanyahu said. Russian President Vladimir Putin stated Saturday that Moscow’s proposal to evacuate the enriched uranium from Iran to help negotiate a deal remains on the table. Most of the highly enriched uranium is believed to be at Iran’s Isfahan nuclear complex, the IAEA director general told The Associated Press last month; that facility was struck during the 12‑day U.S.-Israeli war in 2025 and has faced less intense attacks this year.
Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi issued a separate warning Sunday against a Franco‑British plan to support maritime security in the Strait of Hormuz after hostilities conclude. “The presence of French and British vessels, or those of any other country, for any possible cooperation with illegal U.S. actions in the Strait of Hormuz that violate international law will receive a decisive and immediate response from the armed forces,” he wrote on social media. French President Emmanuel Macron responded by saying the initiative would not be a military deployment but an international mission to secure shipping once conditions allow.
Meanwhile, South Korea’s government announced preliminary findings that two unidentified objects struck the South Korean‑operated vessel HMM NAMU about a minute apart while it was anchored in the strait last week, causing an explosion and a fire. Investigators have not yet determined who was responsible.
The flurry of diplomatic, military, and nuclear developments came as the weeks‑old conflict showed no sign of abating, with each side’s maximal demands — and their public rejections — deepening the deadlock.