US President Donald Trump said Friday he was “not satisfied” with a new Iranian negotiating proposal, as peace talks remain frozen despite a weeks-long ceasefire.
Iran delivered the draft to mediator Pakistan on Thursday evening, the IRNA news agency reported, without detailing its contents.
“At this moment I’m not satisfied with what they’re offering,” Trump told reporters, blaming stalled talks on “tremendous discord” within Iran’s leadership.
“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?” he added, saying he would “prefer not” to take the first option “on a human basis.”
The war, launched by the United States and Israel with surprise strikes on February 28, has been on hold since April 8, with only one failed round of direct talks since.
Trump, under pressure at home to seek congressional authorization for the war, wrote to lawmakers Friday declaring hostilities “terminated” — despite no change in the US military posture.
The Pentagon later said the US would withdraw about 5,000 troops from Germany over the next year after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said this week that Iran was “humiliating” Washington at the negotiating table.
Iran has maintained its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, choking off major flows of oil, gas and fertilizer, while the United States has imposed a counter-blockade on Iranian ports.
Despite the stalemate, the ceasefire has held — but fighting has continued elsewhere in the region.
On the Lebanese front, Israel has continued deadly strikes despite a ceasefire with Iran-backed group Hezbollah in mid-April that sought to halt more than six weeks of fighting.
Lebanon’s health ministry said 13 people were killed in strikes in the south, including in the town of Habboush, where the Israeli army had issued an evacuation order shortly before the attack.
Meanwhile, Washington announced late Friday it had approved major arms sales to its allies in the Middle East, including a $4 billion Patriot missile deal with Qatar and nearly $1 billion in precision weapons systems to Israel.
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– ‘Stuck in purgatory’ –
Iran’s judiciary chief Gholam hossein Mohseni Ejei said Friday that his country had “never shied away from negotiations,” but added it would not accept “imposition” of peace terms while seeking to avoid renewed conflict.
The White House has declined to provide details on the proposal, but news site Axios reported US envoy Steve Witkoff had submitted amendments that put Tehran’s nuclear program back on the negotiating table.
The changes reportedly include demands that Iran not move enriched uranium from bombed sites or resume activity there during talks.
News of the Iranian proposal briefly pushed oil prices down nearly five percent, though they remain about 50 percent above prewar levels amid the ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
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Tehran resident Amir told Paris-based AFP journalists the stalemate “feels like we are stuck in purgatory” and expressed little hope for the proposal.
“This is all to waste time,” he said, predicting the United States and Israel “will attack again.”
