Trump Says US May Strike Iran Again in Days, Claims Tehran Seeks a Deal

On Tuesday, standing before reporters at the White House, President Donald Trump said he had been an hour away from ordering a strike on Iran before he held off. The day before, he had said he paused a planned resumption of hostilities after Tehran sent a new proposal to end the U.S.-Israeli war. Now he said another attack might be necessary, and he put a rough clock on it: two or three days, maybe Friday, Saturday or Sunday, maybe early next week, a limited period of time. His stated reason was that the United States cannot let Iran have a new nuclear weapon.

Trump also said Iran's leaders are begging for a deal. In Tehran, the account differed. Ebrahim Azizi, head of the Iranian parliament's national security committee, wrote on X that the pause came because Trump realized any move against Iran would mean facing a decisive military response.

Iranian state media described the new peace proposal. It calls for an end to hostilities on all fronts, including Lebanon, the exit of U.S. forces from areas near Iran, and reparations for destruction caused by the U.S.-Israeli attacks. Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi, cited by the IRNA news agency, said Tehran also wants sanctions lifted, frozen funds released and the U.S. marine blockade ended. As described in Iranian reports, the terms look little changed from Iran's previous offer, which Trump rejected last week as garbage.

Pakistan is carrying the messages. A Pakistani source confirmed that Islamabad, which hosted the only round of peace talks last month, had passed the Iranian proposal to Washington. The source said both sides keep changing their goalposts and added that there is not much time. Reuters could not determine whether any military preparations had been made for strikes that would restart the war Trump began in late February.

Trump is under pressure to reach an accord that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a key route for global oil and other commodities. He has before voiced hope that a deal was close, and has before threatened heavy strikes if none came. On Monday he said Washington would be satisfied with an agreement that kept Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and that there seemed to be a very good chance of working something out. If that could happen without bombing the hell out of Iran, he said, he would be very happy.

The toll so far is large. U.S.-Israeli bombing killed thousands of people in Iran before a ceasefire suspended it in early April. Israel has killed thousands more in Lebanon, which it invaded in pursuit of the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia, and has driven hundreds of thousands from their homes there. Iranian strikes on Israel and neighboring Gulf states have killed dozens.

The ceasefire has mostly held, though drones have recently been launched from Iraq toward Gulf countries including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, apparently by Iran and its allies. Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said they started the war to curb Iran's support for regional militias, dismantle its nuclear program, destroy its missile capabilities and create conditions for Iranians to topple their rulers. The war has not yet taken away Iran's stockpile of near-weapons-grade enriched uranium, or its ability to threaten neighbors with missiles, drones and proxy militias. The clerical leadership, which faced a mass uprising at the start of the year, withstood the onslaught with no sign of organized opposition.

Trump spoke shortly after his administration imposed sanctions on an Iranian foreign currency exchange house and on what it called front companies handling transactions for Iranian banks. What to watch now is whether the Pakistani channel produces an agreement that reopens the Strait of Hormuz before the window Trump described closes.