Iran counters US ceasefire proposal, denies talks

What happened

Tehran on Wednesday rejected a 15-point U.S. proposal to pause the increasingly costly Iran war and offered its own maximalist demands while insisting the country was not in negotiations with President Donald Trump. The U.S. plan, as described by Pakistani intermediaries, included Iran agreeing to abandon its nuclear program, hand over its enriched uranium, curb its missile arsenal and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian officials said on English-language state-run Press TV they wanted war reparations, an end to hostilities and assassinations, safeguards against future attacks and recognition of Iran’s “exercise of sovereignty” over the strait.

Who said what

The passing back and forth of “warnings” and “positions” is not negotiation, just “an exchange of messages,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Wednesday to state broadcaster IRIB. “We have no intention of negotiating,” and “that they are now talking about negotiations is an admission of defeat.” The Iranians “are negotiating, by the way,” Trump said at a fundraiser Wednesday night, “and they want to make a deal so badly, but they’re afraid to say it because they figure they’ll be killed by their own people.”

Trump “can’t stop talking about how much his administration is negotiating with Iran,” and Iranian leaders “can’t stop denying” it — “almost as if they’re trying to troll him,” The New York Times said. And both “strategies make sense.” Trump is “raising hopes that the war might end soon” because rising gas prices and other costs have made it increasingly “unpopular with the American public.” Iranian leaders want to “keep oil prices high” and “would also like to stay in power,” and defying Trump “might help them do that.“ These “competing incentives are probably pushing both parties toward more serious negotiations.”

What next?

Trump “appears increasingly interested in finding an off-ramp with Iran,” the BBC said, but the recent “head-spinning developments” did not ease “growing concern inside the administration that Trump doesn’t have a concrete plan for what comes next.” Of course, “ending the war isn’t up to Trump alone,” The Wall Street Journal said, as Iran and Israel are showing no interest in pausing the fighting. “Iran will end the war when it decides to do so,” an unidentified Iranian official said on state TV, “and when its own conditions are met.”