“They asked for everything up front:” US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz explains why Trump rejected Iran’s proposal | Today’s news
Days after US President Donald Trump rejected Iran’s seven-day ceasefire proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, provided Washington accepts Tehran’s demands, Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the UN, explained the reason on Sunday (local time), saying Tehran had asked for “everything up front”.
Waltz made these remarks to CNN, saying, “They’ve asked for everything in advance. They’ve asked for relief from the billions and billions of sanctions that are coming as Operation Economic Fury, but also … immediate UN sanctions that have been in place for many years.”
The US ambassador further noted that the UN sanctions against Iran were imposed because Tehran had “repeatedly violated a number of issues related to its nuclear program”. Trump has repeated several times that the primary goal of the war against the Islamic Republic is to ensure that Iran never has a nuclear weapon.
Read also | US-Iran war news LIVE: Oil prices rise as Hormuz impasse continues
Trump Rejects Iran Ceasefire; expects preliminary strikes
On September 26 (Saturday), Trump rejected the Iranian proposal, saying it was losing “very badly.” Before leaving the White House, he told reporters: “They made a proposal, but I rejected it,” adding: “They want to do a deal where they open the strait immediately because they are losing so badly.”
The formal rejection came a day after The Wall Street Journal, citing US officials, reported that a proposal for a seven-day ceasefire had been rejected, with the US president expecting to resume bombing after the November 3 mid-term elections.
In an interview with Axios on Sunday, Trump explained that the conditions Tehran set for reopening the Strait of Hormuz were something Washington could have agreed to a year ago, adding that the Islamic Republic had overplayed its hand. Despite the rejection of the proposal, he expressed confidence that negotiations between the two sides would resume this week.
Later, in an interview with Fox News, the US president expressed his belief that the US will win the conflict with Iran “very soon”. However, he also admitted that new military strikes are “possible” ahead of the medium-term deadlines. He said, “I think what’s going to happen is we’re going to win this war very soon, and once we win it, oil is going to go down to where it was before the war.”
Read also | US-Iran War: Trump Rejects Tehran’s Ceasefire Proposal to Reopen Hormuz
Further, Trump reiterated the main focus of US policy, saying: “And the key is that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.”
Iran refuses to ease demands, supports diplomacy
After Trump rejected the ceasefire proposal, Iran made it clear that it would not change the conditions set for reopening the Strait of Hormuz. However, Iranian officials expressed support for negotiations and diplomacy. Iran’s IRIB quoted Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi as saying over the weekend: “The US president made some good remarks and also many contradictory ones, which unfortunately we hear from him often.” He added that only a “negotiated solution” could help end the deadlock over the global energy bottleneck.
In an interview with NBC News, Araghchi said that while there was always room for negotiation, “we have no reason to go back to diplomacy and deal with this administration again.”
Attention will now shift to Iran and whether negotiations will resume as Trump expects, despite his rejection of the proposal.
