US president Donald Trump said yesterday that he was \u201cnot satisfied\u201d with the latest Iranian proposal for talks on the Middle East war, while Iran\u2019s foreign minister\u00a0 Abbas Araghchi said Tehran was ready for diplomacy, if the United States changes its approach.<\/p>\n
Mr Trump\u2019s comments came after Iranian state media and a Pakistani official said Iran had submitted its latest proposal for negotiations, raising some hope that a deadlock in efforts to end the war might be broken.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey want to make a deal, but… I\u2019m not satisfied with it,\u201d Mr Trump told reporters as he left the White House for Florida, adding that the Iranian leadership was \u201cvery disjointed\u201d and split into two or three groups.<\/p>\n
Mr Trump praised Pakistan\u2019s mediation efforts, saying negotiations by phone were continuing. \u201cThey\u2019ve made strides, but I\u2019m not sure if they ever get there,\u201d Mr Trump said. \u201cThey\u2019re asking for things that I can\u2019t agree to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Global oil prices, which remain well above $100 a barrel, had eased following news of the Iranian proposal.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said his country was ready to pursue diplomacy if the US changes what he called its \u201cexcessive approach, threatening rhetoric and provocative actions.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, in a post on social media Mr Araghchi added that: \u201cIran\u2019s armed forces remained ready to defend the country against any threat.\u201d<\/p>\n
The war, which began with US and Israeli attacking Iran on February 28, has led to the deaths of thousands of people, while the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has caused massive disruption to energy markets, choking off 20pc of the world\u2019s oil and gas supplies.<\/p>\n
The blockade of the vital sea channel has also increased concerns about the possibility of a wider economic downturn. The US navy is blocking exports of Iranian crude oil and American officials on Friday yesterday told shippers that they risked sanctions if they paid tolls to Iran to pass through the strait.<\/p>\n
A ceasefire has been in place since April 8 but reports that Mr Trump was to be briefed on plans for new military strikes to compel Iran to negotiate had pushed oil prices up to a four-year high at one point on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Iran has activated its air defences and plans a wide response if attacked, having assessed that there will be a short, intensive US strike, possibly followed by an Israeli attack, two senior Iranian sources told Reuters on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n
In response to US and Israeli strikes at the start of the war, Iran fired at American bases, infrastructure and US-linked companies in Gulf states, while the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah launched missiles at Israel, which responded with strikes on Lebanon.<\/p>\n
Mr Trump\u2019s administration argued that the ceasefire with Iran had \u201cterminated\u201d hostilities as a legal deadline arrived on Friday yesterday for him making the case to the US Congress about the war.<\/p>\n
A US official also told Reuters: \u201cFor War Powers Resolution purposes, the hostilities that began on Saturday, February 28, have terminated.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Thursday, US defence secretary Pete Hegseth argued the 60-day clock was paused under the ceasefire.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are in a ceasefire right now, which our understanding means the 60-day clock pauses or stops in a ceasefire,\u201d he said during a US Senate armed services committee hearing.<\/p>\n
Mr Trump has repeated that Iran will not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon, and that the price of petrol \u2013 an important concern for his Republican Party before mid-term elections in November \u2013 would drop sharply as soon as the war ended.<\/p>\n
Iran has long demanded that the US acknowledge its right to enrich uranium, which Tehran says it seeks only for peaceful purposes \u2013 but which Western powers say is aimed at building nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n
Asked yesterday about his options, Mr Trump saidon Friday: \u201cDo 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?\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked if he wanted to blast the hell out of them, Mr Trump said: \u201cOn a human basis, I prefer not.\u201d<\/p>\n
China\u2019s UN ambassador, Fu Cong, said on Fridayyesterday it was an urgent necessity to maintain the ceasefire and that the Strait of Hormuz needed to be reopened as quickly as possible. He said he was sure the strait would be high on the agenda if it is still closed when Mr Trump travels to China this month.<\/p>\n
Saudi Arabia\u2019s only official alcohol shop has run short of supplies, as the disruption caused by the Iran war has delayed shipments, visitors to the store said.<\/p>\n
Officially Saudi Arabia\u2019s 1952 blanket ban on alcohol remains in place, but the ultra-conservative kingdom has allowed one licensed shop as it tries to lure more expatriates.<\/p>\n
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Michael Birnbaum: Trump faces making concessions to Iran in order to end conflict
Situated in Riyadh\u2019s diplomatic district, the shop has no name and no sign.<\/p>\n
It opened in 2024 to serve non-Muslim diplomats and last year expanded to cater for wealthy non-Muslim foreign residents.<\/p>\n
Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US president Donald Trump said yesterday that he was \u201cnot satisfied\u201d with the latest Iranian proposal for talks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468393,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,11,23,12,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-468392","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-latest-news","14":"tag-latest-news-ticker","15":"tag-latestnews","16":"tag-main-news","17":"tag-mainnews","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-topstories","21":"tag-world","22":"tag-world-news","23":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116518009352346956","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}