President Trump has rejected Iran’s proposal for a seven-day ceasefire and has told aides he expects to resume bombing Iran after the November midterms, U.S. officials said.
Tehran’s proposal would have reopened the Strait of Hormuz and resumed nuclear talks in return for the U.S. lifting its blockade of Iranian ports, which is causing deep damage to the country’s economy. Trump says openly that Tehran is begging for a deal after the midterms that dismantles its nuclear program.
But privately Trump is skeptical Iran would meet his demands and has told his staff that he sees a renewed bombing campaign as likely, the officials said.
Trump’s current position indicates the conflict’s stage—a liminal space between war and peace—is likely to tilt back toward hostilities. But the president, who has declared victory since the earliest days of the seven-month fight, alternates between pursuing diplomacy, ordering airstrikes and tightening sanctions around Iran. His views today could shift as the war drags over the coming weeks, officials said, and could be affected by the results of the midterms.
The level of strikes Trump is contemplating couldn’t be determined. He is reluctant to resume major combat operations, the officials said, partly because the U.S. wants to reserve dwindling munitions for other contingencies. But Trump has also announced massive attacks to push through diplomatic deadlocks in U.S.-Iran negotiations, sometimes following through but always stepping back from his most audacious threats, including wiping out the entirety of Iranian civilization.
Trump told the United Nations this week politics don’t enter his mind when aiming to pry nuclear fuel from Iran.
“The Republican Party is running, and I’ll be helping them, but I am not running. I gave absolutely no credence and will not give credence through the election when it comes to Iran,” he told world leaders during the annual General Assembly in New York. “The only thing that does is that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.”
Trump has also told Republicans to pretend he is on the ballot when they head to the polls.
A U.S. official said Washington and Tehran are still negotiating through mediators, including on the nuclear issue. An American-led effort to ensure oil tankers sail through the Strait of Hormuz despite Iranian threats has lessened the urgency for an agreement, the official said.
Qatar and other regional mediators have been working around the U.N. General Assembly to reinvigorate talks between Iran and the U.S. In a meeting in Qatar Sunday, Iran broached the idea of a seven-day pause in fighting that could pave the way to end Iran’s attacks on shipping in exchange for the U.S. lifting its blockade, people familiar with the matter said.
The seven-day proposal entails that the U.S. should lift its naval blockade, unfreeze some Iranian assets, lift sanctions on Iranian oil exports and, in exchange, Iran will open the Strait of Hormuz and start negotiations on its nuclear program.
The U.S. has told Iran and the mediators that Trump has no intention of lifting the maritime embargo, officials familiar with the matter said. The U.S. believes economic pressure will eventually force Tehran to sign an agreement with terms that are favorable to Washington and the Arab states along the Persian Gulf.
Arab mediators said Iranian diplomats have presented a number of proposals to end the war and acknowledged the deepening economic crisis in their country. But the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the powerful paramilitary and economic force that has essentially run Iran since the war began in February, has said that it won’t entertain new formulas for an agreement and that it is prepared for a long war.
The Revolutionary Guard wants to return to the terms closer to the preliminary deal Trump struck with Iran in June. That agreement promised to provide relief from sanctions on oil sales, grant access to Iran’s frozen assets and acknowledge a role for Tehran administering the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for opening the waterway.