Iran on Sunday insisted on a diplomatic solution to end its conflict with the United States and Israel and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, after US President Donald Trump announced that he had rejected an Iranian proposal to halt the fighting. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said reopening the strategic waterway was conditional on Tehran’s demands being met, stressing that negotiations were the only way out of the crisis.
Araghchi links reopening the strait to Tehran’s conditions
Our conditions are clear, and any move towards reopening the Strait of Hormuz depends on these conditions being met
Iran announced a peace proposal last week on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meetings in New York, saying it had been conveyed to the US side through Qatari mediators. Trump said on Saturday that he had rejected the Iranian plan, saying Tehran’s losses were driving it to seek an agreement on the strait.
He added in remarks to reporters at the White House: “They want to make a deal to open the Strait of Hormuz immediately because they’re losing badly.” But Araghchi said the mediators facilitating communications between Tehran and Washington had not formally conveyed a US rejection of the proposal to Iran, despite Trump’s public remarks. He added: “We are waiting for the mediators to convey the final positions to us, and we will make a decision on that basis.”
The Wall Street Journal was the first to report that Trump had rejected the Iranian proposal, citing unnamed US officials. The newspaper said the US president had privately expressed doubts about Iran’s readiness to meet his demands and told his aides that he was inclined to resume the bombing campaign after the US midterm elections scheduled for November.
Economic pressure and declining shipping through Hormuz
Earlier, a US official described the indirect talks with Iran as “positive and constructive”. The United States imposed an economic blockade on Iran to pressure it to halt Iranian attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz. The attacks led to a sharp decline in shipping traffic through the region, as Trump repeatedly insists that the United States controls the waterway.
Iranian army commander-in-chief Amir Hatami said the war had reached a critical and decisive stage and that Tehran would not accept a situation in which it was denied trade while foreign powers used the region’s strategic waterways.
He added in remarks carried by state media: “If Iran cannot trade, and if Iran cannot live, no one will be able to trade or live.” Iran has also held contacts with Saudi Arabia over the Strait of Hormuz, amid the consequences of a conflict that has continued for seven months, disrupting oil flows through one of the world’s most important shipping routes and damaging the global economy.
Iranian plan to reopen the strait within seven days of an agreement
Speaking to reporters at the United Nations on Friday 25 September, Araghchi explained that accepting the proposed agreement would trigger a seven-day countdown to reopen the strait, alongside a halt to the fighting in the region. He said: “If the US side is serious about reaching an agreement and reopening the Strait of Hormuz, everything is ready now.”
The Iranian foreign minister added that Washington’s approval could allow the warring parties to begin broader talks on “mutually agreed subjects”. These talks could include Iran’s nuclear programme, one of the main areas of dispute between Tehran and Washington.
Trump had made preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb one of the main objectives he announced at the start of the war, alongside ending its ability to attack its neighbours and creating conditions for Iranians to overthrow their leadership.
By contrast, a senior Iranian official said Tehran would show no flexibility over its nuclear programme, even if the United States approved the peace plan. The official added that Iran would make no concessions on what it regards as its rights, including uranium enrichment, and would not agree to ship its stockpile of highly enriched uranium out of the country.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said in an interview with CBS programme “Face the Nation” that Tehran was ready to hold talks on its nuclear programme and other issues, but would not accept “bullying or coercion”.
He added that “Iran is not seeking war, but it will defend itself against pressure, threats and attacks”, noting that his country had already agreed that it “should not develop nuclear weapons”. The war began on 28 February with US and Israeli attacks on Iran, after previous diplomatic efforts to prevent or end it had failed.
Since then, pauses in the fighting have alternated with new rounds of strikes, killing thousands, weakening Iran’s conventional forces and causing further damage to the country’s already struggling economy. Iran and its allies widened the confrontation across the region in response to the attacks.
Tehran targeted US allies in the Gulf with drones and missiles, while its allies, the Houthis in Yemen, attacked Saudi interests. In the latest regional extension of the fighting, the health ministry affiliated with the Houthi authorities said seven people had been killed and 40 others, including children, injured on Sunday in a raid targeting shops inside a market at the Mawiyah Junction in Taiz governorate, south-western Yemen.
Later, Yemen’s internationally recognised government said its forces had targeted a Houthi military camp and vehicles at the same junction.
