Tehran says US must choose diplomacy or continued confrontation amid \u201cpossibility of renwed conflict\u201d
\nWASHINGTON
\nUS President Donald Trump said Saturday he will review a new Iranian peace proposal, but cast doubt over its prospects as he left open the possibility of future attacks on Iran. Negotiations between the two countries have been deadlocked since a ceasefire came into effect on April 8, with one round of peace talks to end the more than two-month war having failed in Pakistan.
\nThe dour outlook came after Iran\u2019s Tasnim and Fars news agencies reported Tehran submitted a 14-point proposal to mediator Islamabad. Details included ending the conflict on all fronts and enacting a new framework for the crucial Strait of Hormuz, Tasnim said. \u201cI will soon be reviewing the plan that Iran has just sent to us, but can\u2019t imagine that it would be acceptable, in that they have not yet paid a big enough price for what they have done to Humanity and the World, over the last 47 years,\u201d Trump said on his Truth Social platform.
\nIn a brief interview with reporters in West Palm Beach, Florida, he declined to specify what could trigger new military action against the Islamic republic. \u201cIf they misbehave, if they do something bad, but right now, we\u00b4ll see,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s a possibility that could happen, certainly.\u201d On Saturday, Mohammad Jafar Asadi, a senior figure in the Iranian military\u2019s central command, said \u201ca renewed conflict between Iran and the United States is likely.\u201d
\n\u201cEvidence has shown that the United States is not committed to any promises or agreements,\u201d he added, according to Fars news agency. Deputy foreign minister Kazem Gharibabadi told diplomats in Tehran \u201cthe ball is in the United States\u2019 court to choose the path of diplomacy or the continuation of a confrontational approach.\u201d Iran, he said, was \u201cprepared for both paths.
\n\u201cUS news site Axios reported earlier in the week that Trump\u2019s envoy Steve Witkoff had asked for Tehran\u2019s nuclear program to be put back on the negotiating table.Iran\u2019s mission to the UN pointed to the massive US nuclear arsenal, accusing Washington on Saturday of \u201chypocritical behavior\u201d towards Iran\u2019s own atomic ambitions. There was no legal \u201crestriction on the level of uranium enrichment, so long as it is conducted under the IAEA\u2019s supervision, as was the case with Iran,\u201d it said, using the abbreviation for the UN nuclear watchdog.
\nIran has maintained a stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz since the war began, choking off major flows of oil, gas and fertiliser to the world economy, while the United States has imposed a counter-blockade on Iranian ports.Oil prices are about 50 percent above pre-war levels. The vice speaker of Iran\u2019s parliament, Ali Nikzad, said that under draft legislation being considered for managing the waterway, 30 percent of tolls collected would go towards military infrastructure, with the rest earmarked for \u201ceconomic development.\u201d
\n\u201cManaging the Strait of Hormuz is more important than acquiring nuclear weapons,\u201d he said. Fighting meanwhile continued Saturday in Lebanon, where Israel has carried out deadly strikes despite a separate truce with the Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah. The Israeli military said it had struck dozens of Hezbollah targets across southern Lebanon following evacuation warnings for nine villages.Lebanon\u2019s state-run National News Agency reported three deaths in the attacks.Hezbollah, for its part, claimed several attacks targeting Israeli troops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tehran says US must choose diplomacy or continued confrontation amid \u201cpossibility of renwed conflict\u201d WASHINGTON US President Donald Trump said Saturday he will review a new Iranian peace proposal, but cast doubt over its prospects as he left open the possibility of future attacks on Iran. Negotiations between the two countries have been deadlocked since …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":97201,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97225"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97236,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97225\/revisions\/97236"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}