United States President Donald Trump on Friday said he was “not satisfied” with a new Iranian negotiating proposal, as peace talks remain frozen despite a weeks-long ceasefire.
Iran delivered the draft to mediator Pakistan on Thursday evening, the IRNA news agency reported, without detailing its contents.
“At this moment I’m not satisfied with what they’re offering,” Trump told reporters, blaming stalled talks on “tremendous discord” within Iran’s leadership.
“Do we want to go and just blast the hell out of them and finish them forever – or do we want to try and make a deal?” he added, saying he would prefer not to take the first option “on a human basis.”
The war, launched by the United States and Israel with surprise strikes on February 28, 2026, has been on hold since April 8, with only one failed round of direct talks since.
Trump, under pressure at home to seek congressional authorisation for the war, wrote to lawmakers on Friday declaring hostilities “terminated” – despite no change in the U.S. military posture.
The Pentagon later said the U.S. would withdraw about 5,000 troops from Germany over the next year after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said this week that Iran was “humiliating” Washington at the negotiating table.
Iran has maintained its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, choking off major flows of oil, gas, and fertilizer, while the United States has imposed a counter-blockade on Iranian ports.
Despite the stalemate, the ceasefire has held – but fighting has continued elsewhere in the region.
On the Lebanese front, Israel has continued deadly strikes despite a ceasefire with Iran-backed group Hezbollah in mid-April that sought to halt more than six weeks of fighting.
Lebanon’s health ministry said 13 people were killed in strikes in the south, including in the town of Habboush, where the Israeli army had issued an evacuation order shortly before the attack.
Meanwhile, the United States announced late Friday it had approved major arms sales to its allies in the Middle East, including a $4 billion Patriot missile deal with Qatar and nearly $1 billion in precision weapons systems to Israel.
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