TEHRAN: Iran’s chief negotiator said Tuesday that Washington must accept Tehran’s latest peace plan or face failure, after US President Donald Trump warned the truce in the Middle East war was on the brink of collapse.
The war, which erupted more than two months ago with US-Israeli strikes on Iran, has spread throughout the Middle East and roiled the global economy despite the ceasefire, impacting hundreds of millions worldwide. Both sides have refused to make concessions and repeatedly threatened to resume fighting, but neither appears willing to return to all-out war.
“There is no alternative but to accept the rights of the Iranian people as laid out in the 14-point proposal. Any other approach will be completely inconclusive; nothing but one failure after another,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said in a post on X. “The longer they drag their feet, the more American taxpayers will pay for it.” Iran sent its proposal in response to an earlier US plan, details of which remain limited. Media reports have said the American plan involved a one-page memorandum of understanding aimed at ending the fighting and establishing a framework for negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme.
Iran’s foreign ministry said its response called for ending the war on all fronts, including Lebanon, halting the US naval blockade on Iranian ports and securing the release of Iranian assets frozen abroad under longstanding sanctions. But Trump slammed Tehran’s reply as “TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE”, saying the US would enjoy a “complete victory” over Iran and that the truce that has halted fighting for over a month was on its last legs. In a show of defiance, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they carried out drills in Tehran aimed at “enhancing combat capability to confront any movement of the American-Zionist enemy”, state media reported Tuesday.
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