President Trump ripped the Iranian regime Sunday for “playing games” as his team reviewed Tehran’s latest response to a peace proposal that calls on the Islamic republic to abandon its nuclear ambitions and release its stranglehold on shipping in the Persian Gulf.
Mr. Trump accused Iran of delaying negotiations and again threatened further attacks.
“I have just read the response from Iran’s so-called ’Representatives.’ I don’t like it — TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!” he posted on Truth Social.
“For 47 years the Iranians have been ’tapping’ us along, keeping us waiting, killing our people with their roadside bombs, destroying protests, and recently wiping out 42,000 innocent, unarmed protestors, and laughing at our now GREAT AGAIN Country,” Mr. Trump wrote Sunday afternoon on Truth Social. “They will be laughing no longer!”
The president bashed former President Barack Obama for his 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that lifted sanctions and unfroze Iranian assets held abroad. Separately, the U.S. paid $1.7 billion to settle a pre-1979 financial dispute. In exchange, Tehran promised to stop enriching its uranium to a weapons-grade level.
Mr. Trump issued his warning hours after Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Iran’s desire to lord over the Strait of Hormuz is hindering a negotiated end to the war.
“The world should not tolerate an Iranian regime that is trying to choke off the entire world’s economy,” Mr. Waltz told “Fox News Sunday.”
“It cannot start just throwing sea mines indiscriminately out into the ocean, attacking shipping,” he said. “They’ve even now started talking about, on Iranian state TV, of taking the undersea cables that move financial data, cloud information and all kinds of important economic information in and out of the Gulf.”
U.S. officials were analyzing Tehran’s counterproposal — delivered via a Pakistani mediator overnight — though Mr. Waltz signaled that the White House remained “immovable” on its core nuclear and maritime demands.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian sounded combative after news of Iran’s response spread around the West.
“We will never bow our heads before the enemy, and if talk of dialogue or negotiation arises, it does not mean surrender or retreat,” Mr. Pezeshkian wrote on X. “Rather, the goal is to uphold the rights of the Iranian nation and to defend national interests with resolute strength.”
Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates said they fended off drone attacks Sunday. The UAE said the drones originated from Iran. Another drone strike set fire to a ship off the coast of Qatar.
The three Gulf nations said no casualties were reported from the offensives and no aggressor had claimed responsibility, but the Qatari Foreign Ministry called it a “dangerous and unacceptable escalation that threatens the security and safety of maritime trade routes and vital supplies in the region.”
The flare-up undermined a ceasefire meant to allow the U.S. and Iran to negotiate an end to their war.
The two nations traded attacks Thursday. On Friday, the U.S. disabled two oil tankers sailing under the Iranian flag near the Strait of Hormuz.
The U.S. is enforcing a blockade of Iranian ports as a counter to Iran’s halting of traffic through the channel, which is key to global oil, fertilizer and natural gas trade.
The U.S. military said Sunday that it had turned back 61 commercial vessels and disabled four ships since the blockade began a month ago.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the Trump administration has not ruled out using military might to reopen the strait if negotiations do not trend in a positive direction.
U.S. forces have knocked out Iran’s air and naval defense systems, Mr. Wright said, as well as its industrial capacity to keep rearming.
Iran has booby-trapped the strait in an effort to gain leverage in the peace talks, and Mr. Wright said patience is wearing thin in Washington.
“If it’s clear in the next few days that there’s not a good path to a negotiated settlement, we’ll go back to the military method to open the strait,” Mr. Wright told CBS.
“The economic pressure on Iran right now is increasing dramatically.”
That pressure is going both ways, though. Americans are feeling the pinch. AAA said the average cost of gas is around $4.55, and the cost of oil is about $95 per barrel.
Mr. Wright said he “can’t make any predictions about oil prices or gasoline prices” and when they may subside.
Iran’s unpredictable behavior has made it hard to anticipate future fuel price changes, Mr. Wright added, but it all starts with getting the Persian Gulf’s maritime traffic back to normal.
“I can say that when we start to get free flow of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, energy prices will come down,” Mr. Wright told NBC News.
U.S. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett struck a more confident tone, saying negotiations to reopen the strait “could take a month or two.”
Mr. Hassett said he expected a surge in oil supplies once the crucial passage resumes operations.
“But once, basically, the gusher opens, then we expect that oil prices could drop relatively quickly, and certainly ahead of the [midterm] election[s],” Mr. Hassett told Fox News.
Mr. Hassett said the White House is working to lessen the impact of rising fuel prices by tapping strategic oil reserves and loosening environmental guidelines to encourage domestic refineries to produce more gas.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
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