Donald Trump said Saturday he had been briefed on the concept of a deal with Iran but was waiting for the exact wording before rendering a judgment — while leaving open the possibility of resuming military strikes if Tehran steps out of line.
“They told me about the concept of the deal. They’re going to give me the exact wording now,” Trump said before boarding a flight to Miami from West Palm Beach. On social media, he added that he could not imagine the proposals would be acceptable and that Iran had not yet paid a sufficient price for what it had done. Asked directly whether he might restart strikes, Trump declined to rule it out. “If they misbehave, if they do something bad, right now we’ll see. But it’s a possibility that could happen,” he said.
A senior Iranian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed Saturday that Tehran had formalized a proposal — conveyed to Washington through mediators — that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the US naval blockade of Iran while deferring nuclear negotiations to a later stage. The official described the sequencing as a deliberate concession designed to break the impasse, calling it “a significant shift aimed at facilitating an agreement.”
Under the framework Iran is proposing, hostilities would end with guarantees that neither the United States nor Israel would attack again. Iran would reopen the strait. The US would lift its blockade. Nuclear talks — covering limits on Iran’s enrichment program in exchange for sanctions relief — would follow in a separate phase. Iran’s core demand in those future talks would be American recognition of its right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, even if it agrees to suspend the program in the interim.
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“Under this framework, negotiations over the more complicated nuclear issue have been moved to the final stage to create a more conducive atmosphere,” the official said.
Iranian media reported that Tehran’s 14-point proposal goes further still, encompassing the withdrawal of US forces from areas surrounding Iran, the release of frozen Iranian assets, compensation for war damages, the lifting of sanctions, an end to hostilities in Lebanon as well as in Iran itself, and a new mechanism for managing transit through the strait.
Trump said Friday he was not satisfied with the latest Iranian proposal, even as Iran’s foreign minister signaled Tehran was prepared for diplomacy if Washington adjusted its approach. Trump has also said repeatedly that Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon — the stated justification he offered when he launched strikes in February, in the middle of nuclear negotiations that the war then terminated.
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The US and Israel suspended their bombing campaign four weeks ago but the two sides remain far from a final agreement. The ceasefire has held its name while its substance has been contested almost daily — over Lebanon, over the naval blockade, over the conditions under which the strait would reopen and who would control it.
Iran has been blocking nearly all commercial shipping from the Persian Gulf for more than two months, cutting off roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas supplies. The US imposed its own counter-blockade of ships from Iranian ports last month. The combined effect has pushed American gasoline prices to $4.30 per gallon on average, with California crossing $6. Trump’s Republican Party faces the prospect of a voter backlash over those prices when midterm congressional elections arrive in November — a domestic clock that is running alongside the diplomatic one.
Trump said Friday that “on a human basis” he did not prefer the military course of action, and told congressional leaders he did not need their permission to extend the war because the ceasefire had “terminated” hostilities — a legal argument that sidesteps the War Powers Resolution’s congressional notification requirements.
While saying he is in no hurry, Trump is operating inside a set of pressures that suggest otherwise: rising pump prices, falling approval ratings, an economy absorbing the largest energy supply disruption in history, and a midterm election year that punishes incumbents when ordinary Americans are paying more for everything.
The exact wording of the proposal is coming. Whether it changes anything depends on whether the concept Trump was briefed on survives contact with the details.