Sunday, May 3, 2026
President Donald Trump rejected Iran’s latest peace proposal on Sunday, May 3, calling the 14-point plan “not acceptable” and signaling that Washington is unwilling to end the war on Tehran’s terms as a fragile ceasefire enters its fourth week.
Trump confirmed his rejection in an interview with Kan News on Sunday, after Al Jazeera reported the details of Iran‘s plan earlier in the day. The Iranian proposal — submitted Friday through Pakistani intermediaries — lays out three stages for ending the conflict and demands that all core issues be resolved within 30 days, a timeline the Trump administration has indicated it finds unrealistic. “I can’t imagine that it would be acceptable in that they have not yet paid a big enough price,” Trump wrote on social media Saturday, before formally rejecting the plan Sunday.
Iran’s 14-point proposal, framed as a rebuttal to a nine-point U.S. plan, includes a demand for Washington to lift all sanctions, end its naval blockade of Iranian ports, withdraw U.S. forces from the region, release frozen Iranian assets worth billions of dollars, pay war reparations, cease all hostilities including Israel’s operations in Lebanon, and establish a new control mechanism for the Strait of Hormuz. On the nuclear file — the central sticking point throughout the conflict — Iran proposed deferring those discussions to a later phase, arguing that a less hostile environment would make technical negotiations more productive. A senior Iranian official described that concession as a significant shift aimed at facilitating an agreement.
Washington rejected that framing outright. The Trump administration has repeatedly insisted that Iran’s nuclear program must be addressed before any comprehensive deal can be struck. U.S. officials want Tehran to surrender its stockpile of more than 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium — enough, Washington says, to produce a nuclear weapon. Iran maintains its nuclear program is peaceful and says it is willing to accept some limits on enrichment in exchange for full sanctions relief, consistent with the terms of the 2015 nuclear agreement that Trump abandoned during his first term.
U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff confirmed Sunday that the two sides remained “in conversation,” and Washington conveyed its response to Iran’s proposal through Pakistani mediators. Tehran said it was reviewing the U.S. reply. Despite the diplomatic back-and-forth, Trump made clear that military pressure remained on the table. “If they do something bad, there is a possibility it could happen,” he told reporters Saturday when asked whether airstrikes could resume. The U.S. and Israel suspended their bombing campaign against Iran on April 7, when a two-week ceasefire was announced.
The rejection lands against an already tense backdrop. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday on Fox News that the economic blockade was “suffocating” the Iranian regime, with Iran‘s oil storage capacity “rapidly filling up” and its wells potentially facing forced shutdowns within days. Kevin Hassett, Director of the National Economic Council, said on CBS that Iran had “an economy that’s really on the precipice of extreme calamity” and was experiencing hyperinflation. Iran’s deputy parliament speaker Ali Nikzad declared Sunday that Tehran “will not back down from our position on the Strait of Hormuz, and it will not return to its prewar conditions” — a statement that further narrows the diplomatic space.
For businesses exposed to the Gulf, the failed proposal deepens uncertainty. The Strait of Hormuz — through which approximately one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas flowed before the war — remains effectively closed to most commercial traffic. Trump has proposed his own plan to reopen the strait but has conditioned any easing of the U.S. naval blockade on a comprehensive agreement that includes the nuclear issue, a condition Iran has so far refused to accept.
With both sides now waiting for the other to move first on Hormuz, and no second round of direct talks yet scheduled, the gap between Washington and Tehran remains wide. Trump added Sunday that Iran was desperate for a settlement because the country had been “decimated” — but his rejection of their latest offer suggests the path to that settlement just got longer.
JBizNews Desk
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