Tehran Studies Washington's Reply as Its Delegation Is Expelled
Iran is weighing the American response to its proposal for ending the war, presented to the president at Wednesday’s cabinet meeting; officials will not say what it contains. Overnight it emerged that Marco Rubio had ordered the Iranian delegation out of New York after the talks stalled, one American official saying they had “overstayed their welcome”. Tehran’s United Nations mission rejects that account.
The disagreement is now explicitly about order rather than content. An official briefed on the negotiations said the document circulating is a seven-day trust-building sequence that would return both sides to an enhanced version of the June memorandum agreed in Islamabad, including concrete steps on the nuclear programme, and that “the disagreement centres on the sequencing of the steps rather than the components of the plan”. Tehran wants the blockade lifted, oil sanctions waived and an estimated $12bn in frozen assets released, with the strait reopening on the sixth day; Washington wants the whole thing settled at once and the strait open first. In public Abbas Araghchi gave nothing: “there has been no change in Iran’s position… At present, there has been no discussion at all about flexibility.” Mohsen Rezaei was blunter about the other side, calling Mr Trump “trapped in a quagmire where he can neither negotiate nor fight”. Iran’s mission says its departure was scheduled and notified on 17 September. Watch whether Tehran answers formally rather than through leaks.