Waltz says US rejected Iran’s Hormuz proposal over demands for sanctions relief

US ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz said Sunday that President Donald Trump rejected Iran’s proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz because Tehran sought sanctions relief before taking the steps Washington wanted. Iran says reopening the waterway depends on the US meeting its conditions. The disagreement matters for shipping through a route that has been sharply disrupted during the war and for efforts to resume talks on ending it.

Waltz told CNN’s State of the Union that Iranian negotiators ‘were asking for everything up front’, according to The Guardian’s account of the interview. He said Trump was not confident Iran was negotiating in good faith or would reach an agreement on its nuclear programme. His remarks set out Washington’s stated reason for rejecting the offer; they do not establish what Iran would have done had its conditions been met.

What the two sides say the proposal requires

Waltz said Iran wanted relief from sanctions being imposed as part of US economic pressure. He also cited a demand to end UN snapback sanctions linked to Iran’s nuclear programme, The National reported. The US blockade is intended to pressure Iran over attacks on vessels in the strait, according to The Guardian. Waltz’s objection centred on when relief would be granted relative to further negotiations.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described Tehran’s conditions differently. He said the US should end what he called its war of aggression, release frozen Iranian assets and allow Iranian oil sales. Iran would then be prepared to reopen the strait, he told NBC, according to The National. These are Araghchi’s stated terms; the complete written proposal was not available in the reporting cited here.

Trump called the proposal unacceptable at the White House on Saturday, while saying he would like to make a deal, Al Jazeera reported. Araghchi said afterward that Iran had seen Trump’s public reaction but had received no definitive response through mediators. In a related account, Iran said it would wait for an official US response after Trump rejected the Strait of Hormuz proposal. Araghchi said Tehran would decide what to do after mediators conveyed Washington’s position.

A disputed account of earlier negotiations

Waltz pointed to a memorandum reached in June as a reason for US scepticism. He said Iran violated it by attacking international shipping and said 146 countries had joined in condemning those attacks. The Guardian and The National reported those figures as Waltz’s statements. The cited reporting does not independently determine whether Iran breached the memorandum first.

Araghchi rejected Waltz’s account of the June agreement in comments reported by The National. He said Iran had not violated it first and argued that the agreement contained a dispute-settlement provision the US could have used. The two governments’ accounts of how the earlier arrangement broke down remain in conflict; neither side’s allegation resolves that dispute.

The earlier memorandum provides context for the seven-day offer. Al Jazeera reported that it laid out a framework for negotiations before renewed confrontation over shipping. Iran’s new proposal again links a settlement to restored traffic through Hormuz, but its reported timetable puts US concessions ahead of reopening the strait and further talks. The precise obligations in the new proposal cannot be checked against a published full text in the reporting available here.

Diplomacy remains an option, both sides say

Araghchi said Iran remained ready for diplomacy even as it was prepared for renewed fighting. He told The National that Tehran was waiting for an official response through mediators despite Trump’s public rejection. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, speaking to Al Jazeera, said he distrusted talks with Washington because previous negotiations had been followed by strikes and sanctions. He said commercial shipping could resume if negotiations ended the war.

Trump told Axios on Sunday that he expected further talks with Iran during the coming week, according to both The Guardian and The National. That leaves room for contact, but neither report establishes that the parties had accepted a new agreement or that the strait would reopen on Iran’s proposed timetable. For now, the central difference is the order of concessions: Washington objects to granting relief up front, while Tehran says its conditions must be met before reopening the waterway.