Donald Trump is considering new military strikes on Iran after dismissing Tehran’s latest peace proposal as “garbage”, according to a report, as he prepared for a high-stakes meeting with Xi Jinping in China.
Sources told CNN that Trump has grown impatient with the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz and feels a division in the Iranian leadership is obstructing progress towards a deal.
Several officials now doubt whether Tehran is willing to adopt a serious negotiating stance, they said, driving the administration to reconsider their strategy.
Aides to the president said he is now more seriously considering reopening major combat operations, though he is unlikely to make a decision before his historic trip to China this week. A ceasefire agreed last month between the two countries has largely held despite occasional exchanges of fire.
Trump’s anticipated visit to Beijing, the first for a sitting US president in a decade, has already been pushed back over the Iran conflict.
Hopes of a peace deal to end the war were dampened on Monday as Trump said the month-long ceasefire with Iran was on “life support”.
He told reporters in the Oval Office that while the ceasefire was still in place for now, it was “unbelievably weak”.
“I would call it the weakest right now, after reading that piece of garbage they sent us. I didn’t even finish reading it,” Trump, who has repeatedly threatened to end the ceasefire, told reporters.
Iran doubled down on its latest offer, a 14-point proposal floated at the start of May and reported to demand a permanent end to the war and resolving all issues within 30 days.
That would include the withdrawal of all US forces from around Iran, the release of frozen assets, the lifting of sanctions and a “new mechanism” for the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf wrote on social media on Monday, after Trump said the ceasefire was in peril, that there was “no alternative” to Iran’s most recent demands.
“Any other approach will be completely inconclusive; nothing but one failure after another. The longer they drag their feet, the more American taxpayers will pay for it,” he said.
Ebrahim Rezaei, Iran’s parliamentary national security and foreign policy commission spokesperson, said that if the country is attacked again, it could enrich uranium up to 90 per cent purity, a level considered weapons-grade.
“One of Iran’s options in the event of another attack could be 90 percent enrichment. We will review it in the parliament,” Rezaei posted on X.
The US had proposed an end to the fighting before starting talks on more contentious issues, including Iran’s nuclear programme, which was cited among the reasons for launching the conflict in February.
Also on Monday, the US imposed new sanctions on individuals and companies it said were helping Iran to ship oil to China, piling on pressure ahead of Trump’s visit to Beijing.
Trump is expected to arrive in Beijing on Wednesday, where Iran is set to be among the topics discussed with Xi.
China’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday that Trump also wanted to discuss Taiwan and the case of jailed media tycoon Jimmy Lai.
A spokesperson said China’s stance on US arms sales to Taiwan remains unchanged, and that its position on Lai has been stated many times already.
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