With peace talks between the U.S. and Iran planned to kick off later this week, Iran has put forward a proposal that President Donald Trump has called “a workable basis on which to negotiate.”
“Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran, but a two week period will allow the Agreement to be finalized and consummated,” Trump said in a post on Tuesday, in which he announced that the countries had agreed to a temporary ceasefire.
The Prime Minister of Pakistan, Shehbaz Sharif, that day invited leaders from Iran and the U.S. to the country’s capital, Islamabad, “to further negotiate for a conclusive agreement to settle all disputes” on Friday, April 10. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing on Wednesday that Trump was sending a negotiating team led by Vice President JD Vance to Islamabad this weekend.
Read More: The Iran Ceasefire Reveals a Domino Effect of Conflict
Tensions are already rising among the countries involved in the conflict ahead of those anticipated negotiations, however.
Iranian state media reported on Wednesday that the Strait of Hormuz had been closed less than a day into the temporary ceasefire in response to Israel’s continuing attacks in Lebanon, where it has been carrying out an extensive bombing campaign targeting the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.
The two-week ceasefire comes after Trump threatened to erase a “whole civilization” if Iran failed to re-open the strait, a strategic shipping chokepoint through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil passes, by a deadline of 8 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday. The President said the pause in the fighting was “subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING” of the strait. Leavitt, while disputing reports that the Strait of Hormuz had been closed, said during the press briefing on Wednesday that such a move would be “completely unacceptable.”
Read more: Can the Iran Ceasefire Last? We Asked 3 Experts About the Road Ahead
Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammed-Baqer Qalibaf, meanwhile, said in a statement Wednesday afternoon that the Israeli strikes violated the first clause of his country’s 10-point proposal—and was among three points that had so far been violated since the temporary ceasefire began.
Given those alleged violations, he suggested, "a bilateral ceasefire or negotiations is unreasonable."
“It’s going to end up becoming a crucial sticking point,” Trita Parsi, executive vice president of Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, tells TIME of Israel’s war in Lebanon. “I think it's going to be very difficult for the Iranians to agree to a ceasefire on their own for themselves, while leaving Lebanon exposed.”
This, he says, will prove a “major test” to the United States in the coming weeks as it attempts to broker a deal with Iran.
Here’s what you need to know about the Iranian proposal that leaders from both countries have indicated could serve as a basis for the talks, and the potential points of contention in the negotiations.
Iran’s embassy in India posted a list of the 10 points it said were included in the country’s proposal on Wednesday. Iran’s official news agency, IRNA, reported roughly the same points, according to The New York Times. The points included, in the words of the embassy:
1. "Non-aggression"2. "Continuation of Iran's control over the Strait of Hormuz"3. "Acceptance of enrichment"4. "Lifting all primary sanctions"5. "Lifting all secondary sanctions"6. "Termination of all UN Security Council resolutions"7. "Termination of all IAEA Board of Governors resolutions"8. "Payment of compensation to Iran"9. "Withdrawal of US combat forces from the region"10. "Cessation of war on all fronts, including against the heroic Islamic Resistance of Lebanon."
It is not clear if the proposal Iran has publicly released is the same one Trump has commented on. Leavitt said on Wednesday that “the Iranians originally put forward a 10-point plan that was fundamentally unserious, unacceptable and completely discarded. It was literally thrown in the garbage by President Trump and his negotiating team." She said Iran then delivered “a more reasonable and entirely different and condensed plan” prior to the deadline Trump had imposed, which the President determined was a “workable basis on which to negotiate.”
The White House, for its part, has not detailed the contents of Iran’s plan.
Trump said in a post on Wednesday that “many of the 15 points” in the ceasefire proposal laid out by the U.S. last month, which Iran rejected at the time, “have already been been agreed to.” The President also said that “there will be no enrichment of Uranium,” which would counter one of the points in the publicly released 10-point proposal.
Qalibaf, in his own Wednesday statement, referred to three points of what he characterized as the 10-point proposal Trump had called “workable” that the Iranian leader said have already been violated.
“The first clause,” he said, is “regarding the ceasefire in Lebanon.” He described another clause as “prohibiting any further violation of Iran airspace.” And he said the sixth clause included “Iran’s right to enrichment.”
What are the potential sticking points in the proposal?
Public comments from officials indicate multiple areas where Iran and the U.S. don’t appear to be aligned as the slated talks in Islamabad approach.
For one, while Qalibaf’s statement and the version of the proposal publicly released by Iran include an acceptance of Iran’s right to enrichment, Leavitt on Wednesday called Iran’s enriched uranium “a red line that the President is not going to back away from.”
The countries involved in the conflict and the two-week ceasefire are also clashing over whether the agreement bars attacks on Lebanon.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has claimed that the temporary ceasefire does not include Lebanon, and in the wake of the agreement being announced his country launched among the heaviest bombardments it has yet carried out in its war with Hezbollah. Lebanon’s health ministry reported that 182 people had been killed by the Wednesday attacks.
The White House has also insisted that Lebanon is not included. “Lebanon is not part of the ceasefire. That has been relayed to all parties involved in the ceasefire,” Leavitt said on Wednesday.
Pakistan’s Sharif and Iranian officials, however, have indicated that Lebanon was included in the agreement—and Iran has signaled that the Israeli attacks could be a critical point of contention.
“The Iran–U.S. Ceasefire terms are clear and explicit: the U.S. must choose—ceasefire or continued war via Israel. It cannot have both,” Iran Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on X.
Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, says that Iran’s reported closure of the Strait of Hormuz over the Israeli strikes could be a threat to peace talks over the next two weeks.
“The Iranians are gambling now that Trump will put pressure on Israel to back away from Lebanon, to include Lebanon in the ceasefire,” Vatanka tells TIME. “It's a risk because Trump, A) might not want to do that. B) He might not have the power to do it. Netanyahu can tell him, ‘I don't care what Washington tells me, I'm Israel. I do what I wish.’ This decision Iranians have made, they're going for region-wide cease fire.”
Depending on the extent to which the U.S. includes Israel’s interests in negotiations, Vatanka says that Iran may have to “abandon Hezbollah”—something he says would be “very hard” for it to do.
Parsi, of the Quincy Institute, also stresses that Israel’s attacks on Lebanon could present a significant hurdle for the U.S. in negotiations. “The Israelis obviously don't want to agree to the ceasefire. Can the United States reign in Israel? If it cannot or will not do so, what is the value of a ceasefire with the United States?”
But Vatanka also says that “if Iran genuinely wants permanent peace, they have to put on the table serious concessions, not just on the nuclear issue, but essentially something that talks about preparedness to be normalizing relations with the U.S.”
Vatanka calls many of Iran’s demands, such as the proposals for U.S. military withdrawal and reparations, ”wishful thinking.”.
When it comes to the U.S. side, Parsi says that people may be surprised by what Trump is willing to accept to get out of the war.
“I think Trump will end up accepting that the Iranians will have—together with the Omani—some sort of a collection system, a toll system in the Strait of Hormuz, as long as they keep the strait open,” he says. The White House has said Trump is opposed to tolls being imposed on ships passing through the strait.
“The big challenge there is that the Iranians can use that just as much for rebuilding critical infrastructure and bridges and steel plants and energy facilities as they could for missile programs, drones and the arms industry,” says Seth G. Jones, president of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), about the proceeds of such a toll system.
A deal giving full control of the strait to Iran would be “totally unacceptable” to the Gulf states in the region, Jones added.
“There are a number of countries that are going to care to a great degree about profiting from but also helping control what goes into the Strait of Hormuz, particularly your Gulf states,” he says. “So how do you find some sort of regional cooperation?”
But Jones also says that, even though the Strait of Hormuz is Trump’s biggest priority right now, he mostly wants to “find a way out of this war.”
“The U.S does not want to risk naval or ground forces to open up the strait. And, I think the risk is politics: people die in war and people are wounded in war, but I think in this particular case, there’s a promise that the U.S. isn't going to get involved in a forever war.”
To that end, Parsi’s estimation is that at the end of these two weeks Iran and the U.S. may not have reached a traditional ceasefire agreement, but instead come to a “non agreement status quo” in which the U.S. agrees to exit the war, and Iran strikes its own deals with its neighbors for exports through the Strait.
“[Iran] will open up the straits, but not in the manner that the U.S. may have preferred,” he predicts.
“I think for the Gulf states, this will be very problematic,” he adds, “not because of the cost or that this will dramatically change the equation of their finances, but because they will recognize that Iran's geopolitical position actually, in some ways, was enhanced by this war, rather than being weakened.”
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