Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) yesterday said the US faced a choice between an “impossible” military operation or a “bad deal” with Tehran, after US President Donald Trump disparaged Iran’s latest peace proposal.
Negotiations between the two countries have been deadlocked since a ceasefire came into effect on April 8, with only one round of direct peace talks held so far.
Iran’s Tasnim and Fars news agencies reported that Tehran had submitted a 14-point proposal to mediator Pakistan, but Trump was quick to cast doubt on it.
Photo: AFP
“I will soon be reviewing the plan that Iran has just sent to us, but can’t imagine that it would be acceptable in that they have not yet paid a big enough price for what they have done to Humanity, and the World, over the last 47 years,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
US news Web site Axios reported, citing two sources briefed on the proposal, that it set “a one-month deadline for negotiations on a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, end the US naval blockade and permanently end the war in Iran and in Lebanon.”
The IRGC yesterday said in a statement that it sought to put the onus back on Trump, saying he must choose between “an impossible operation or a bad deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
“The room for US decisionmaking has narrowed,” it said.
The day before, Iranian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for Legal and International Affairs Kazem Gharibabadi told diplomats in Tehran that “the ball is in the United States’ court to choose the path of diplomacy or the continuation of a confrontational approach.”
Iran was “prepared for both paths,” he said.
In a brief interview with reporters in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Saturday the US president declined to specify what could trigger new US military action.
“If they misbehave, if they do something bad, but right now, we’ll see,” he said. “But it’s a possibility that could happen, certainly.”
In yet more bellicose rhetoric, Mohsen Rezaei, a military adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, said Iranian forces would sink US ships.
“The US is the only pirate in the world that possesses aircraft carriers. Our ability to confront pirates is no less than our ability to sink warships. Prepare to face a graveyard of your carriers and forces,” he wrote on X.
There is no evidence that Iran has sunk any US military vessels during the war.