Iran military ‘expects renewed war with US’

People walk near a display at a currency exchange bureau in Tehran, as the value of the Iranian rial drops. Reuters

A senior Iranian military officer said Saturday that renewed fighting with the US was “likely”, hours after President Donald Trump said he was not satisfied with an Iranian negotiating proposal.

Iran delivered the new draft to mediator Pakistan on Thursday evening, state media reported, without detailing its contents.

The war, launched by the US and Israel in late February, has been on hold since April 8, with one failed round of peace talks having taken place in Pakistan.

“At this moment I’m not satisfied with what they’re offering,” Trump told reporters, blaming the stalled talks on “tremendous discord” within Iran’s leadership.

He added that the decision he faced was between whether to “just blast the hell out of them” or to “try and make a deal”, saying that he would rather not take the first option.

Saturday Mohammad Jafar Asadi, a senior figure in the Iranian military’s central command, said “a renewed conflict between Iran and the United States is likely”, in quotes published by Iran’s Fars news agency.

“Evidence has shown that the United States is not committed to any promises or agreements,” he added.

Deputy foreign minister Kazem Gharibabadi told diplomats in Tehran that “the ball is in the United States’ court to choose the path of diplomacy or the continuation of a confrontational approach”.

Iran, he said, was “prepared for both paths”.

Iran’s judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei said on Friday that his country had “never shied away from negotiations”, but would not accept the “imposition” of peace terms.

The White House has declined to provide details on the latest Iranian proposal, but news site Axios reported that US envoy Steve Witkoff had submitted amendments to a previous one putting Tehran’s nuclear programme back on the negotiating table.

Iran’s mission to the UN pointed to the United States’ massive nuclear arsenal, accusing it Saturday of “hypocritical behaviour” towards Iran’s own atomic programme.

It went on to insist there was no legal “restriction on the level of uranium enrichment, so long as it is conducted under the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s supervision, as was the case with Iran”.

News of the new Iranian proposal had briefly pushed oil prices down nearly 5%, though they remain about 50% above pre-war levels amid the ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran has maintained a stranglehold on the strait since the war began, choking off major flows of oil, gas and fertiliser to the world economy, while the United States has imposed a counter-blockade on Iranian ports.

Speaking at a rally on Friday, Trump said “we’re like pirates” as he described an earlier helicopter raid on an oil tanker under the blockade.

The vice-speaker of Iran’s parliament, meanwhile, said Iran would not “relinquish our rights in the Strait of Hormuz, and the movement of vessels in the Strait of Hormuz will not be the same as before”.

Ali Nikzad added that under legislation before parliament for managing the waterway, 30% of tolls collected would go towards military infrastructure, with the rest earmarked for “economic development”.

“Managing the Strait of Hormuz is more important than acquiring nuclear weapons,” he said.

Despite the ceasefire in the Gulf, fighting has continued in Lebanon, where Israel has carried out deadly strikes despite a separate truce with the Iran-backed group Hezbollah.

Lebanese state media reported a fresh series of strikes in the south Saturday, while Hezbollah claimed new attacks targeting Israeli troops.

In Iran, the war’s economic toll is deepening, with oil exports crimped and inflation surging past 50%.

“Everyone is trying to endure it, but… they are falling apart,” 40-year-old Amir, a Tehran resident, told an AFP reporter based outside the country.

“We still have not seen much of the economic effects because everyone had a bit of savings,” he said, adding: “They had some gold and dollars for a rainy day.”

“When they run out, things will change.”