Tehran (AFP) – Iran delivered a new proposal for peace talks with the United States via mediator Pakistan, state media reported Friday, with negotiations between the two sides frozen despite a weeks-long ceasefire. The text of the proposal was handed to Islamabad on Thursday evening, the IRNA news agency reported. The war, launched by the United States and Israel with a vast wave of surprise strikes on February 28, has been on hold since April 8, but only one failed round of direct talks has taken place between Iranian and US representatives.
In the meantime, Iran has maintained its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off vast amounts of oil, gas, and fertiliser from the world economy, while the US has imposed a counterblockade on Iranian ports. The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that US President Donald Trump had told security officials to prepare for the blockade to last months, causing oil prices to spike. Despite the failure to negotiate an end to the war, the ceasefire has held.
On Friday, judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, a senior figure and well-respected cleric, said “the Islamic Republic has never shied away from negotiations.” But, he added in a video shared by the judiciary’s Mizan Online website, “we certainly do not accept imposition” — though Tehran does not want a return to war, he said.
Details of the new Iranian proposal were not immediately available, and the White House declined to comment on “private diplomatic conversations.” However, the news site Axios reported that US envoy Steve Witkoff earlier this week had submitted amendments to a previous proposal seeking to reinject the issue of Tehran’s nuclear programme into the negotiations. Citing a source familiar with the matter, Axios said they included a demand that Iran not try to move enriched uranium out of sites bombed during a brief war last year, or resume any activity there while talks continue.
Optimism after news of the Iranian proposal sent oil prices falling by nearly five percent for US benchmark West Texas Intermediate. However, prices are still roughly 50 percent above their prewar levels as traders confront a prolonged closure of Hormuz, while the European Central Bank held interest rates. An EU official told AFP that the bloc’s foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas had spoken with Iran’s top diplomat Abbas Araghchi by phone Friday about diplomatic efforts to reopen the strait.
Tehran resident Amir told Paris-based AFP journalists that the current stalemate in talks “feels like we are stuck in purgatory.” Still, the 40-year-old held out little hope for the new proposal. “This is all to waste time,” he said, predicting the US and Israel “will attack again.”
Washington, meanwhile, was gripped by a legalistic debate over whether Trump had passed a deadline for requesting congressional approval for his war with Iran. Administration officials, including Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, insisted that the ceasefire meant that the clock was paused on a 60-day deadline requiring the president to seek war powers authorisation from Congress. Trump is under increasing domestic pressure over the war, with inflation spiking, no clear victory in sight, and midterm elections due in November.
In Iran, meanwhile, the economic consequences of the war, which come on top of years of fierce international sanctions, were beginning to bite. The US imposed new sanctions Friday on three Iranian foreign currency exchange firms, while the Treasury warned against paying a “toll” to Iran for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz. On Thursday, the US military said its blockade had stopped Iran from exporting $6 billion worth of oil, while inflation has risen past 50 percent in recent weeks. “For many people, paying rent and even buying food has become difficult, and some have nothing left at all,” 28-year-old Mahyar told an AFP reporter based outside Iran.
Trump has repeatedly lashed out at Washington’s international allies for failing to join efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. France and Britain have led efforts to bring together an international coalition of dozens of countries that would help reopen the strait, but only once peace is secured. But on Thursday, a US official confirmed to AFP that Washington was launching its own international coalition to restart shipping. That prompted French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot to insist that the US mission was “not of the same nature as the one we established,” and would instead serve as “a sort of complement” to it.
Meanwhile, the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier has left the Middle East after taking part in operations against Iran, a US official said Friday, though two other carriers remain.
© 2024 AFP
