![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774450152_148_default.jpg\")
<\/p>\nIran has received an American 15-point plan for a ceasefire in the Mideast war through intermediaries from Pakistan, officials in Islamabad said Wednesday. The proposal was sent even as Washington began to move paratroopers to the Middle East to back up a contingent of Marines already heading there. <\/p>\n
But Iran’s military scoffed at the diplomatic efforts and launched more attacks Wednesday on Israel and the Persian Gulf region, including an assault that sparked a huge fire at Kuwait International Airport, sending black smoke billowing into the sky.<\/p>\n
The Pakistani officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to release details, described the 15-point plan broadly as touching on sanctions relief, civilian nuclear co-operation, a rollback of Iran’s nuclear program, monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency, missile limits and access for shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
U.S. President Donald Trump has said that American officials are in negotiations with Iran, though hasn’t said who they are in contact with. Iran’s Khatam Al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, which commands both the regular military and the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, suggested that there are no talks. <\/p>\n
“Have your internal conflicts reached the point where you are negotiating with yourselves?” said Lt. Col. Ebrahim Zolfaghari, a spokesperson for the headquarters. <\/p>\n
“Our first and last word has been the same from day one, and it will stay that way: Someone like us will never come to terms with someone like you,” Zolfaghari said in the video statement aired on state television. “Not now, not ever.”<\/p>\n
LISTEN | The complexities of the Strait of Hormuz:<\/p>\n
Front Burner24:40Can the U.S. re-open the Strait of Hormuz alone?<\/p>\n
‘They’d like to make a deal’<\/p>\n
Speaking Tuesday at the White House, the president said the U.S. is “in negotiations right now” and that the participants included special envoy Steve Witkoff, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice-President JD Vance.<\/p>\n
“We have a number of people doing it,” Trump said. “And the other side, I can tell you, they’d like to make a deal.”<\/p>\n
Iran’s powerful parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalif has accused Trump of manipulating oil and financial markets with misleading statements \u2014 from the White House and on social media \u2014 that talks were occurring. <\/p>\n
Iran’s attacks on regional energy infrastructure and its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil is usually shipped, has sent oil prices skyrocketing and rocked world markets over fears of a global energy crisis.<\/p>\n
As a result, Pakistan is not alone in seeking an end to the hostilities. Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty on Wednesday told U.S. envoy Massad Boulos there needs to be “concerted regional and international efforts to de-escalate the situation.”<\/p>\n
WATCH | Trump says he’s negotiating:<\/p>\n
Trump says Iran offered him a ‘big present’ in war negotiations<\/p>\n
U.S. President Donald Trump said there\u2019s been progress in negotiations with Iran, including a ‘present’ to do with the Strait of Hormuz, as attacks continued throughout the Middle East. <\/p>\n
Any talks between the U.S. and Iran face monumental challenges. Many of Washington’s shifting objectives, particularly over Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs, remain difficult to achieve. <\/p>\n
As, well, Iran remains highly suspicious of the United States, which twice under the Trump administration has attacked during high-level diplomatic talks, including with the strikes that started the current war.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774450152_762_default.jpg\")
A U.S. navy sailor looks out at the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln at an undisclosed location on March 18. ( U.S. Navy\/Reuters)<\/p>\n
It’s not clear who in Iran’s government has the authority to negotiate \u2014 or would be willing to, as Israel has vowed to continue killing the country’s leaders.<\/p>\n
Zolfaghari, from the Iranian military, said that the U.S. was in no position to negotiate.<\/p>\n
Even as Trump has talked of negotiations, the U.S. is preparing to send at least 1,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division to the Mideast in the coming days, three people with knowledge of the plans told The Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military plans. <\/p>\n
The Pentagon is also in the process of deploying two marine units that will add about 5,000 marines and thousands of sailors to the region. <\/p>\n
Israel launches new strikes <\/p>\n
The Israeli military said early Wednesday it had begun new wide-scale attacks on Iran targeting government infrastructure, and witnesses reported airstrikes in the northwestern city of Qazvin. <\/p>\n
By afternoon, it said it had completed several waves of airstrikes in Tehran. <\/p>\n
“There have been some days when the bombings are so intense you can’t do anything,” a 26-year-old graduate student in Tehran said, adding his friends mostly stayed at home. He spoke to AP on condition of anonymity because of security fears.<\/p>\n
The Israeli army also said that as part of its strikes a day earlier it targeted an Iranian submarine development centre in Isfahan.<\/p>\n
![\"Several](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774450153_211_default.jpg\")
People examine the damage to an apartment building in Bnei Brak, Israel on Wednesday, a day after it was struck by an Iranian missile. (Ohad Zwigenberg\/The Associated Press)<\/p>\n
Missile alert sirens began early in the morning in Israel as Iran launched its own attacks, which have been a daily occurrence since Israel and the U.S. attacked Iran on Feb. 28 to start the war. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, drone and rocket fire from the Iran-back Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon continued unabated. Since entering the fighting, the group has fired rockets into northern Israel around the clock each day, disrupting the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.<\/p>\n
Iran also kept up the pressure on its Gulf Arab neighbours, with Saudi Arabia’s Defence Ministry saying it had destroyed at least eight drones in the kingdom’s oil-rich Eastern Province, and missile alert sirens sounding in Bahrain. <\/p>\n
Kuwait said it shot down multiple drones but one hit a fuel tank at Kuwait International Airport, sparking a fire, the General Civil Aviation Authority said. Firefighters were working to contain the blaze. <\/p>\n
Kuwait’s ambassador Naser Abdullah H. M. Alhayen told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Wednesday that Iranian attacks on Gulf Arab states’ infrastructure posed an “existential threat.”<\/p>\n
The United Nations’ top rights official Volker Turk described the situation as extremely dangerous and unpredictable. <\/p>\n
“Attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure must end. If they are deliberate, such attacks may constitute war crimes,” Turk told the council.<\/p>\n
Iran’s death toll has surpassed 1,500, its Health Ministry has said. In Israel, 16 people have been killed. At least 13 U.S. military members have been killed, along with more than a dozen civilians in the occupied West Bank and Gulf Arab states.<\/p>\n
Authorities in Lebanon say Israeli strikes have killed more than 1,000 people there, while displacing more than one million.<\/p>\n
WATCH | Retired general sees echoes of Vietnam War:![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774450153_33_default.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
How the U.S. underestimated Iran <\/p>\n
Donald Trump seemed thrilled when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed on day one of the war, but diplomats and military experts say the U.S. underestimated the Iranian resolve. For The National, CBC\u2019s Terence McKenna explores the American miscalculations and how they could shape war\u2019s endgame. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iran has received an American 15-point plan for a ceasefire in the Mideast war through intermediaries from Pakistan,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-559921","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}