WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has offered Iran a 15-point ceasefire plan aimed at temporarily halting the war in the Middle East, as the Pentagon simultaneously orders thousands of Marines, paratroopers and a warship to the region.
The plan presented to Iranian leadership Tuesday broadly included a 30-day ceasefire and sanctions relief for Iran in exchange for a laundry list of U.S. demands, according to the Associated Press and other outlets.
But Iran dismissed the proposal Wednesday, criticizing the White House’s terms as “excessive” and out of step with reality, according to Iranian state-run media.
Those terms included limitations on Tehran’s missile stockpiles, and the permanent end to its nuclear program, its support for regional militias including Hezbollah, and of its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, various outlets reported, citing Pakistani officials mediating the negotiations.
Several of those provisions have long been considered nonstarters for Iran, which sees its missile stockade and regional alliances as central to national security.
Iranian officials responded with defiance and skepticism.
“Iran will end the war when it decides to do so and when its own conditions are met,” an Iranian official told state media. “Not when Trump envisions its conclusion.”
The official outlined the Islamic Republic’s terms for ending the conflict, which included a halt to “aggression and assassinations,” an end to fighting on all fronts, enforceable guarantees that hostilities will not resume, compensation for war damages and a formal recognition of Iran’s sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has stated that Iran is not interested in a ceasefire but rather a comprehensive “end of war” on all fronts, including the lifting of sanctions and guarantees to allow Iran to pursue peaceful nuclear enrichment for energy and medical applications.
Iranian officials told state media that they believed the Trump administration’s diplomatic efforts were deceptive.
“You have reached a stage where you are negotiating with yourselves,” Iranian military spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaqari said in a televised address Wednesday. “Do not call your defeat an agreement.
Since the start of the conflict, Iranian leaders have voiced suspicion of any diplomatic talks with the Trump administration, pointing to prewar diplomatic efforts as evidence they were “tricked.” The Islamic Republic says it made clear in those talks that it had no interest in developing nuclear weapons, but Trump launched his military campaign nonetheless.
There have been conflicting media reports over Tehran’s exact position. Statements from Iranian officials and state-linked outlets have left open the possibility that elements of the proposal are still under review, while some reports frame the response as an outright refusal.
The Iranian response also conflicts with President Trump’s insistence that negotiations were progressing.
“We have had very, very strong talks,” he said Sunday in Florida. “We have points, major points of agreement. I would say almost all points of agreement will at some point very, very soon meet.”
Compounding the issue, Israel — which continues to carry out routine bombing campaigns over Iran — has stayed out of the talks.
Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about the peace deal in a phone call Tuesday. In a televised address, Netanyahu said that Trump “believes there is an opportunity” to realize U.S.-Israeli war objectives in an agreement “that will safeguard our vital interests.”
“At the same time, we continue to strike both in Iran and in Lebanon,” Netanyahu said. “We will safeguard our vital interests in any scenario.”
The negotiations are being facilitated by Pakistan, with support from Egypt and Turkey — countries that have pushed to contain a conflict that has killed more than 2,400 people, further destabilized the embattled region and disrupted global oil markets.
As Washington pursued a diplomatic end to the conflict, the Pentagon deployed an additional 2,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division to the Mideast. An additional 5,000 Marines and thousands of sailors are already en route to the region, where 50,000 more Marines are currently stationed.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters on Wednesday that the deployment “sends a signal to Iran that they need to get their act together,” but denied any coming escalations by the American side. Johnson instead said that he believes “Operation Epic Fury is almost done.”
Now in its fourth week, the operation began with a series of intensive airstrikes that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and dozens of other high-ranking officials. Since then, the U.S. and Israel have carried out over 9,000 strikes targeting Iranian military infrastructure and nuclear program.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters in the Oval Office Tuesday that while the president’s diplomatic envoys seek a peace deal, his department of war will continue to “negotiate with bombs.”
“The president has made it clear that you will not have a nuclear weapon. The War Department agrees,” Hegseth told reporters Tuesday in the Oval Office. “Our job is to ensure that, and so we’re keeping our hand on that throttle.”
Iranian retaliatory strikes have hit Gulf infrastructure and halted energy production and shipping in the region, spurring global fears of an enduring supply crunch. Meanwhile, Israel has expanded operations in Iran and sought to expand its borders into Lebanon.
Oil prices, which had surged above $120 per barrel earlier in the conflict, fell sharply this week on hopes that a ceasefire could ease supply woes.
In a statement Wednesday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres demanded an end to the fighting, which he said “has broken past limits even leaders thought imaginable.”
He specifically called on the U.S. and Israel to end the war, as “human suffering deepens, civilian casualties mount, and the global economic impact is increasingly devastating.”
Times staff writers Ana Ceballos, in Washington, D.C., and Nabih Bulos, in Beirut, contributed to this report.
Transatlantic rift widens as Trump lashes out at NATO allies over unpopular Mideast war
LONDON — President Trump has said he is strongly considering pulling the U.S. out of NATO, ratcheting up his criticism of European allies and exposing a wider rift in the transatlantic alliance — this time over America’s war alongside Israel against Iran.
While Trump’s talk of a possible NATO pullout dates back years, the comments to Britain’s Telegraph newspaper, published Wednesday, were among the clearest and most disparaging yet — suggesting the fracture has deepened perhaps to a point of no return.
Asked whether he would reconsider U.S. membership in the alliance after the war on Iran ends, Trump replied: “Oh yes, I would say (it’s) beyond reconsideration.”
Contacted by The Associated Press, NATO did not provide an immediate comment.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, asked about the comment, said Britain was “fully committed to NATO” and called it “the single most effective military alliance the world has ever seen.”
Many European leaders have felt political pressure over the war, which faces opposition in their countries and has sent petroleum prices soaring as Iran has effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil passes.
“Whatever the pressure on me and others, whatever the noise, I am going to act in the British national interest in all the decisions I make,” Starmer said Wednesday.
Long-simmering tensions within the alliance have bubbled up again over the war. As energy prices have spiked, Trump has been desperate to get countries to send their ships to the Strait. He’s called his NATO allies “cowards,” pulling at any rhetorical lever he can to get help with the fallout of a war that no ally was consulted on or asked to take part in.
For years, Trump has berated America’s European allies, urging them to assume greater responsibility for their own security and spend more on defense. He has argued that the U.S. has done more for them than the other way around.
A U.S. pullout would essentially spell the end of NATO, which flourished for decades under American leadership.
On Truth Social on Tuesday, Trump lashed out at countries “like the United Kingdom, which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran,” and suggested they buy U.S. oil or go to the Strait of Hormuz themselves “and just take it.”
He also wants allies to help fix damage from the war that they had no part in starting.
The U.K. is working on plans that could help assuage Trump.
On Thursday, Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper will host a virtual meeting of 35 countries that have signed up to help ensure security for shipping in the Strait after the war. Starmer said military planners will also work on a postwar security plan for the strait.
The backdrop: NATO not on board to join U.S. in war
NATO is built on Article 5 of its founding treaty, which pledges that an attack on any one member will be met with a response from them all.
As the Iran war has spread, missiles and drones have been fired toward NATO member Turkey and a British military base on Cyprus, fueling speculation about what might prompt NATO to trigger its collective security guarantee and come to their rescue.
The alliance has not intervened or signaled any plan to. Secretary-General Mark Rutte — who has voiced support for Trump and America’s role in the alliance — has been focusing mostly on Russia’s war against Ukraine, which borders four NATO countries.
NATO operates uniquely by consensus. All 32 countries must agree for it to take decisions, so political priorities play a role. Even invoking Article 5 requires agreement among the allies. Turkey or the U.K. cannot trigger it alone.
In the Mideast war, Trump has bristled at the across-the-board rejection from European and other allies, and even rival China, to help secure the Strait of Hormuz.
Many European Union and NATO member country leaders have fumed since the war’s outset on Feb. 28 because they weren’t informed ahead of time, seen as a break with precedent.
Trump insisted he needed the element of surprise, and he spoke out about possible military action and visibly built up U.S. forces in the region in the run-up to the war.
Rising voices, and tougher action, from Europe over the Mideast war
European leaders have called for the war to stop and want the United States and Iran to return to negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program, which America and Israel see as a threat.
The vocal opposition in Europe to Trump’s war against Iran has started to turn into action.
Spain — the most vocal critic in Europe — on Monday said it closed its airspace to U.S. planes involved in the Iran war.
Early last month, France agreed to let the U.S. Air Force use a base in southern France after receiving a “full guarantee” from the United States that planes not involved in carrying out strikes against Iran would land there.
Other countries have spoken out against it: Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s largely ceremonial president, last week called the aggression against Iran a “dangerous mistake” in violation of international law.
U.S. relations with Europe had already soured in recent months over Trump’s call for Greenland — a semiautonomous territory of stalwart NATO ally Denmark — to become part of the United States, prompting many EU countries to rally behind Copenhagen.
Lawless and Keaten write for the Associated Press. Keaten reported from Geneva. AP writer Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.
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Iran dismisses Trump’s peace plan as ‘deceptive,’ as U.S. deploys more troops to Mideast
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has offered Iran a 15-point ceasefire plan aimed at temporarily halting the war in the Middle East, as the Pentagon simultaneously orders thousands of Marines, paratroopers and a warship to the region.
The plan presented to Iranian leadership Tuesday broadly included a 30-day ceasefire and sanctions relief for Iran in exchange for a laundry list of U.S. demands, according to the Associated Press and other outlets.
But Iran dismissed the proposal Wednesday, criticizing the White House’s terms as “excessive” and out of step with reality, according to Iranian state-run media.
Those terms included limitations on Tehran’s missile stockpiles, and the permanent end to its nuclear program, its support for regional militias including Hezbollah, and of its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, various outlets reported, citing Pakistani officials mediating the negotiations.
Several of those provisions have long been considered nonstarters for Iran, which sees its missile stockade and regional alliances as central to national security.
Iranian officials responded with defiance and skepticism.
“Iran will end the war when it decides to do so and when its own conditions are met,” an Iranian official told state media. “Not when Trump envisions its conclusion.”
The official outlined the Islamic Republic’s terms for ending the conflict, which included a halt to “aggression and assassinations,” an end to fighting on all fronts, enforceable guarantees that hostilities will not resume, compensation for war damages and a formal recognition of Iran’s sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has stated that Iran is not interested in a ceasefire but rather a comprehensive “end of war” on all fronts, including the lifting of sanctions and guarantees to allow Iran to pursue peaceful nuclear enrichment for energy and medical applications.
Iranian officials told state media that they believed the Trump administration’s diplomatic efforts were deceptive.
“You have reached a stage where you are negotiating with yourselves,” Iranian military spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaqari said in a televised address Wednesday. “Do not call your defeat an agreement.
Since the start of the conflict, Iranian leaders have voiced suspicion of any diplomatic talks with the Trump administration, pointing to prewar diplomatic efforts as evidence they were “tricked.” The Islamic Republic says it made clear in those talks that it had no interest in developing nuclear weapons, but Trump launched his military campaign nonetheless.
There have been conflicting media reports over Tehran’s exact position. Statements from Iranian officials and state-linked outlets have left open the possibility that elements of the proposal are still under review, while some reports frame the response as an outright refusal.
The Iranian response also conflicts with President Trump’s insistence that negotiations were progressing.
“We have had very, very strong talks,” he said Sunday in Florida. “We have points, major points of agreement. I would say almost all points of agreement will at some point very, very soon meet.”
Compounding the issue, Israel — which continues to carry out routine bombing campaigns over Iran — has stayed out of the talks.
Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about the peace deal in a phone call Tuesday. In a televised address, Netanyahu said that Trump “believes there is an opportunity” to realize U.S.-Israeli war objectives in an agreement “that will safeguard our vital interests.”
“At the same time, we continue to strike both in Iran and in Lebanon,” Netanyahu said. “We will safeguard our vital interests in any scenario.”
The negotiations are being facilitated by Pakistan, with support from Egypt and Turkey — countries that have pushed to contain a conflict that has killed more than 2,400 people, further destabilized the embattled region and disrupted global oil markets.
As Washington pursued a diplomatic end to the conflict, the Pentagon deployed an additional 2,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division to the Mideast. An additional 5,000 Marines and thousands of sailors are already en route to the region, where 50,000 more Marines are currently stationed.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters on Wednesday that the deployment “sends a signal to Iran that they need to get their act together,” but denied any coming escalations by the American side. Johnson instead said that he believes “Operation Epic Fury is almost done.”
Now in its fourth week, the operation began with a series of intensive airstrikes that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and dozens of other high-ranking officials. Since then, the U.S. and Israel have carried out over 9,000 strikes targeting Iranian military infrastructure and nuclear program.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters in the Oval Office Tuesday that while the president’s diplomatic envoys seek a peace deal, his department of war will continue to “negotiate with bombs.”
“The president has made it clear that you will not have a nuclear weapon. The War Department agrees,” Hegseth told reporters Tuesday in the Oval Office. “Our job is to ensure that, and so we’re keeping our hand on that throttle.”
Iranian retaliatory strikes have hit Gulf infrastructure and halted energy production and shipping in the region, spurring global fears of an enduring supply crunch. Meanwhile, Israel has expanded operations in Iran and sought to expand its borders into Lebanon.
Oil prices, which had surged above $120 per barrel earlier in the conflict, fell sharply this week on hopes that a ceasefire could ease supply woes.
In a statement Wednesday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres demanded an end to the fighting, which he said “has broken past limits even leaders thought imaginable.”
He specifically called on the U.S. and Israel to end the war, as “human suffering deepens, civilian casualties mount, and the global economic impact is increasingly devastating.”
Times staff writers Ana Ceballos, in Washington, D.C., and Nabih Bulos, in Beirut, contributed to this report.
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