Ten weeks into a war that has shut down one-fifth of the world’s oil supply, Iran submitted a multipage counterproposal to Washington through Pakistani mediators — and President Donald Trump took less than a day to reject it in its entirety. “I have just read the response from Iran’s so-called ‘Representatives,'” Trump posted on Truth Social Sunday. “I don’t like it — TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!” The gap between the two sides remains wide, and the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed, sending oil prices up nearly 3% on Monday as global markets absorbed the news.
Iran’s proposal, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency, centered on demands for an end to fighting on all fronts — particularly in Lebanon, where Tehran’s proxy Hezbollah is battling Israel — along with the lifting of the U.S. naval blockade on Iranian ports, the unfreezing of billions in Iranian assets, an end to sanctions on Iranian oil sales, and a declaration of Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz. Notably absent from the Iranian document was any substantive commitment on the nuclear question — the issue that triggered the war in the first place. Washington’s position has demanded that Iran agree not to develop a nuclear weapon and halt all uranium enrichment for at least 12 years, hand over approximately 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent, and commit to enhanced inspections by the IAEA. Iran’s response addressed none of these demands.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the stakes explicit in an interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday. “There’s still nuclear material — enriched uranium — that has to be taken out of Iran. There’s still enrichment sites that have to be dismantled,” he said. “There’s still proxies that Iran supports, there’s ballistic missiles that they still want to produce.” When pressed on how the enriched uranium would actually be removed from Iranian soil, Netanyahu did not hesitate: “President Trump said to me, ‘I want to go in there and I think it can be done physically.'”
Negotiators are currently discussing a one-page memorandum of understanding that would declare an end to the war in the region and launch a 30-day period of detailed negotiations, with the duration of any moratorium on uranium enrichment actively contested — Iran proposed five years, the U.S. demanded twenty, and current discussions appear to be converging somewhere between twelve and fifteen. But even that framework is contingent on Iran making the kind of nuclear commitments it has so far refused to make.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry declared that “the nuclear enrichment programme is non-negotiable,” and Iranian state TV framed the country’s counterproposal as focused “exclusively on the cessation of hostilities in the region” — a framing that deliberately sidesteps the nuclear file. Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei called Tehran’s demands “legitimate” and described the proposal as “a generous and responsible offer for regional security.” Trump called it the opposite.
The Strait of Hormuz sits at the center of this standoff not only as a military chokepoint but as an economic weapon. Before the war began on February 28, the narrow waterway carried one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas flows. With it largely closed, fuel prices have climbed globally, and pressure on the Trump administration from domestic consumers is mounting. Iran knows this, and its proposal — demanding sovereignty over the strait while offering only a vague ceasefire — reflects a calculated attempt to leverage economic pain into political concessions on the nuclear file without actually surrendering it.
Two sources with knowledge of the negotiations claimed Iran would agree to remove its highly enriched uranium from the country — a key U.S. priority Tehran has until now rejected — with one source floating the possibility of moving the material to the United States. But those claims remain unconfirmed, and Iran’s official public posture has not moved an inch toward verifying them.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged the complexity of the negotiations. “We don’t have to have the actual agreement written in one day,” he said. “But we have to have a diplomatic solution that is very clear on the topics they are willing to negotiate on and the extent of the concessions they are willing to make at the front end in order to make it worthwhile.”
Iran still possesses enriched uranium capable of being converted to weapons-grade material, and its enrichment infrastructure, though degraded by U.S. and Israeli strikes, has not been dismantled. Netanyahu said plainly, there is still work to be done. Iran’s “generous” proposal is precisely that: a document designed to end the military pressure without ending the nuclear threat. Trump was right to reject it.
