US President Donald Trump said Friday he was “not satisfied” with Iran’s latest proposal in negotiations to end the war between the countries, rejecting the plan almost as soon as it was delivered.
Iran handed over its latest proposal for negotiations to mediators in Pakistan on Thursday night.
“They want to make a deal, I’m not satisfied with it, so we’ll see what happen,” Trump told reporters Friday at the White House.
The shaky three-week ceasefire between the US and Iran appears to still be holding though both countries have traded accusations of violations.
Trump did not elaborate on what he saw as the latest proposal’s shortcomings. “They’re asking for things I can’t agree to,” he said.
Negotiations have continued by phone after Trump called off his envoys’ trip to Pakistan last week, the president said. He expressed frustration with Iran’s leadership, describing it as fractured.
“It’s a very disjointed leadership,” he said. “They all want to make a deal, but they’re all messed up.”
While the ceasefire has largely halted fighting in Iran, the US and Iran are locked in a standoff over the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s traded oil and gas passes in peacetime. A US Navy blockade stopping Iran’s tankers from getting out to sea has Iran’s economy reeling. The world economy is also under pressure as Iran maintains its chokehold on the strait.
Trump this week floated a new plan to reopen the critical passageway used to export oil and gas.
Pakistan officials have said efforts were continuing to ease tensions between Iran and the US Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif told a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday that a response from Iran was still awaited.
Meanwhile, Iran’s imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi has been urgently transferred from prison to a hospital in northwestern Iran after a “catastrophic deterioration” of her health, her foundation said Friday.
The Narges Mohammadi Foundation said the Nobel Prize laureate had two episodes of complete loss of consciousness and a severe cardiac crisis. She was believed to have suffered a heart attack in late March, according to her lawyers who visited her a few days after the incident.
The hospital transfer comes “after 140 days of systematic medical neglect,” since her arrest on Dec. 12, the foundation said.