Iran made a move this Wednesday by rejecting Donald Trump’s 15-point proposal for Iran, considering its terms “excessive”, but it has left a loophole to continue contacts while the mediating countries try to achieve, against the clock, a meeting between the representatives of the two adversaries. That meeting could be, according to the intermediaries, the last opportunity to avoid an even more bitter escalation. The White House warned: “President Trump is not joking and is willing to unleash hell,” said the US president’s spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt. If Tehran does not accept defeat and negotiate, they will be attacked “harder than they have ever been,” he added.
The Iranian Government’s rejection of the plan that Pakistan sent them earlier this week on behalf of Washington has become known through the statements of a senior Tehran official to the Press TV television network. He sees the Trump Administration’s proposal as “excessive and far from the reality of the United States’ failure on the battlefield.”
The senior official also considers the plan “deceptive” and recalls that the Trump Administration has followed a pattern with Tehran this term: it began negotiations and, while they were underway, attacked Iranian territory. Or, as in the June 2025 war, he supported Israel’s bombings in full dialogue with Washington and even ended up joining.
In 2025 it damaged the country’s nuclear facilities; On this occasion, he has killed a good part of the Iranian leadership, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, replaced by his son Mojtaba, whom Israel considers alive and participating in the decision process, according to estimates this Tuesday from its secret services. That pattern, Tehran denounces, could be repeated now: while proposing to talk, the United States, whose arrival is expected this Friday, when Trump’s ultimatum is fulfilled.
of the United States seems, at first glance, a repetition of the proposals that envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner presented to the Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, in their three rounds of meetings before the start of the war: End of Iranian uranium enrichment and dismantlement of that country’s nuclear facilities; of the missile program, and the sponsorship of radical Islamist groups in the Middle East. Added to these demands is now the opening of the strategic route through which 20% of the world’s oil and gas traffic passes and which Iran keeps closed in practice after the beginning of the Israeli-American offensive on February 28. The closure has affected maritime traffic and triggered market instability. In exchange, the United States offers the lifting of the sanctions that weigh against Iran and that hinder its economy.
If Washington does not seem to have given an inch in its demands after four weeks of war, Tehran does not give in and maintains a position of maximums. According to Press TV’s source, it demands that the United States and Israel completely cease “aggressions and assassinations” against Iran and its allies. It also demands a mechanism that guarantees that they will not start them again, the payment of war reparations and the recognition of its sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz as a “natural and legal right.”
An Iranian military spokesman, Ebrahim Zolfaghari, has assured that the situation in the Strait of Hormuz “will not return to what it was” and that his country will decide which ships can pass through it and which cannot. “The authority to allow passage is ours,” indicated the representative, who hours before had disdained the American proposal: Washington, he assured, “is negotiating only with itself.”
In Israel—which wants to continue the campaign it launched with the United States—they estimate that the dialogue has very little chance of success and will almost certainly fail, so there is no concern, according to public television. There is a certain “fear” that Trump will suddenly impose a temporary ceasefire on his ally.
In fact, the army is focusing its bombing on military or ballistic missile production facilities, as well as targets of the Revolutionary Guard or the Basij militia, in an attempt to complete as many targets as possible in the event of an eventual cessation of hostilities. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu digressed when speaking about Hezbollah via videoconference with authorities in the north of the country () to point out that the war in Iran “continues in full force.” He is not, however, bombing energy facilities (as the US president demanded),
Agreement
Washington maintains – or rather, Trump – that Iran is eager to close a deal. “And who wouldn’t want to, if you were them?” he declared this Tuesday from the Oval Office. The president also insists that he has won the war – the conflict is about to turn a month old -, despite the fact that the Pentagon is going to request an extraordinary budget of 200,000 million dollars, the attacks continue and thousands of soldiers are on their way to join the 50,000 it already has in the Middle East.
To Iranian reluctance about these reinforcements while Trump talks about negotiating, representatives of the Administration respond that it is the usual tactic of an experienced businessman, who boasts of his gift for closing deals. “With one hand he offers a deal, with the other he prepares to hit you if he doesn’t get it,” they say. And they allude as proof of good faith that the two great heavyweights of Trump’s foreign policy are now involved in the dialogue attempts: Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and Vice President, JD Vance.
The new leaders of Iran, linked to the Revolutionary Guard, are wary of negotiating with Witkoff and Kushner, who have no nuclear knowledge and real estate developers by profession. They consider that they did not even fully understand the terms that Iran offered in the pre-war talks.
“The Iranian regime is now more radical, less centralized and increasingly convinced that it is winning. It believes it can dictate the terms of how this conflict ends. That leaves Trump with two real options: either accept a ceasefire without an agreement, or an agreement forged around Iranian demands, or a serious escalation, for the global system and the international economy,” says former Iranian military intelligence analyst Danny Citrinowicz, in a comment on social networks. “It is the result of a campaign developed from erroneous assumptions, especially around the Iranian resistance capacity. Iran is not Venezuela. Nor is it a magic formula to solve the Iranian problem.”
assault ships
Meanwhile, time is ticking. This Friday, a group of three amphibious assault ships, with some 2,500 Marines on board, are expected to arrive in the area under the responsibility of the Central Command – in charge of US operations in the Middle East. The Pentagon has also mobilized some 3,000 paratroopers, who can travel to any point in the world in 18 hours. Some 2,500 Marines have been ordered to prepare to sail.
In a press conference, the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Badr Abelati, offered his country as the venue for any possible meeting on the war, if it proves useful in achieving an end to hostilities. According to the senior official, a direct meeting between Iran and the United States may be the “last opportunity” to avoid a bloody escalation.
