Iran deal requires Trump to order Netanyahu to halt Israeli strikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon
Iran’s seven-day proposal asks the United States to act decisively within roughly five days. According to the terms Araghchi outlined at the New York briefing, the US would lift its naval blockade on Iran’s oil ports, restore the waiver permitting Iranian oil exports, end the war on all fronts, and allow the release of some of Iran’s frozen assets. On the sixth day, Iran would reopen the strait through a new route designated jointly with Oman, with the new shipping corridor predominantly running through Iranian waters. On the seventh day, negotiations would begin on Iran’s civil nuclear programme — covering a protocol allowing UN inspectors access to Iran’s damaged nuclear sites and an accounting of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium. The new timeline compresses the sixty-day window for nuclear talks set in the June memorandum of understanding.
Araghchi described the offer as a repackaging of elements already in the June deal, accelerated because, as Iranian diplomats understood it, Trump had come to hate the memorandum. “The conditions we have asked the US to meet is nothing new, nothing more than what was already in the Islamabad agreement, which was signed by the US president,” Araghchi said. At the largely off-the-record briefing, Araghchi argued that Iran has every reason not to negotiate with the US. Iran has done the diplomatic groundwork for the proposal, taking it to China for endorsement and securing Oman’s participation — Oman sits on the south side of the strait — though Iranian diplomats in New York separately said they remained doubtful the US would deliver on the terms.
Iranian diplomats in New York said a three-hour meeting earlier in the week with Witkoff, at which the seven-day plan was laid out, was productive. But Araghchi recounted that he had twice held talks with Witkoff that the envoy characterized as “productive and good,” only for Iran to be bombed by the US the next day. He admitted to remaining skeptical that Witkoff could deliver.
Other Iranian diplomats say Trump’s willingness to rein in Netanyahu in Lebanon remains key, and that if he were to do that, a deal would be feasible. Within the first four to five days of the proposed timeline, Trump would need to lift Iranian asset freezes, permit Iran to export its oil and, probably most difficult of all, order Netanyahu to end Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon, thus achieving what the proposal describes as a “ceasefire on all fronts.”
Saudi Arabia is also concerned that the proposed shipping route is a bilateral arrangement between Iran and Oman rather than a multilateral agreement among the Gulf states as joint signatories, the Guardian reported. The Guardian characterized the deal as a difficult one for Trump to accept, writing that the strait would reopen largely on Iran’s terms, with the new route predominantly running through Iranian waters.
At the briefing, Pezeshkian handed all questions about the talks to Araghchi, who was seated to his right. Pezeshkian denied that the US midterm elections had shaped Iranian thinking — Trump had claimed Iran was waiting until after the vote to offer a deal — but conceded that Iranians wanted the war to end and that the Iranian public had withstood sanctions for forty-five years. Pezeshkian also insisted that Iran’s decision-making machinery was functioning, claiming that the reclusive supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei was completely healthy. Pezeshkian said that assessment rested on his having spent seven hours in Khamenei’s presence. He did not explain what, apart from security, had prevented Khamenei from issuing a voice recording, photograph, or video as proof of life.
Trump has framed his choice as one between “the annihilation of Iran and engagement” — an engagement he said could make Iran “one of the great countries of the world.” The Guardian characterized the actual judgment he faces as more prosaic: whether Trump is prepared to go back to war with Iran after the midterm elections and, if not, whether the US can squeeze the Iranian economy so hard that the leadership will succumb.