It’s been a busy week for Iranian diplomacy that may have come to nothing.
Around the same time, Iran’s state media reported that President Masoud Pezeshkian was on his way back to Tehran. On Saturday, Trump told reporters he rejects Iran’s proposal to reopen the strait. Iran’s president and foreign minister visited New York for the UN gathering of world leaders and proposed a deal with the Trump administration that would end the fighting and open the Strait of Hormuz in seven days. That’s if the US ends its military blockade of Iranian ports, releases frozen Iranian assets and waives sanctions on Iranian oil sales, among other conditions – none of them new. What’s different after past failed attempts is the speedier timeline.
Iran’s pitch to President Donald Trump said a quick deal might help him in the midterm elections in November. The US said its envoys and the Iranians held three hours of indirect talks via mediators Tuesday, their first since the countries’ previous agreement to end the fighting and launch nuclear talks collapsed within days of its signing in June. The latest talks were good and the US was open to more, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday. But Trump used his speech to the UN gathering on Tuesday to threaten to “annihilate” the Islamic Republic. In his own speech a day later, Pezeshkian said Iran would fight “until our last breath. In the final seconds of his speech, however, Pezeshkian said Tehran remained open to diplomacy.
Hours earlier, the US president posted an image on social media calling the crucial waterway the “Trump Strait.
