President Donald Trump is “not happy” with the latest peace proposal from Iranian negotiators, complaining that the country’s leadership is “disjointed” and “very argumentative with each other.”
The Islamic Republic’s latest proposal, the details of which have not been made known, was passed to the White House via Pakistani mediators on Thursday evening. The president told the press on Friday that not only is he not satisfied with the proposal but that Tehran officials are disorganized and unable to agree on who is empowered to make deals with Washington.
“One says one thing, one says another. They’re very confused,” Trump said of his counterparts in Iran. “Obviously, their country has been frankly decimated. Their navy is gone. Their air force is gone. Many of their soldiers, unfortunately, are gone. They’ve got to come up with the right deal.
“At this moment, I’m not satisfied.”
Iranian state news outlet IRNA reported Friday that Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei emphasized that “establishing a sustainable peace” is among “Tehran’s main priorities in negotiations with the United States.”
That sentiment is staggeringly different from the recent rhetoric attributed to Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran who has remained unseen by the public since being wounded in the Feb. 28 strike that killed his father and predecessor.
“We and our neighbors across the waters of the Persian Gulf and the [Gulf] of Oman share a common destiny. Foreigners who come from thousands of kilometers away to act with greed and malice there have no place in it — except at the bottom of its waters,” a statement attributed to Khamenei earlier this week reads.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claims that the leader is lucid and exerting total control over the country that his office commands. Officials assert that he is communicating with his government and the Guard via handwritten notes, sealed in envelopes, and carried by couriers.
Trump has indicated that he believes Khamenei to be alive but severely injured — though he also says the Iranians are trying to “figure out their leadership situation,” indicating that the supreme leader is not wielding the unilateral authority of his father.
“They get close, and then a new group of people come in,” Trump said Friday. “They don’t know who their leaders are. They have no idea who their leaders are, but they’re very confused.”
The president, his negotiators, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have preemptively ruled out any proposal from Iran that would allow the country to continue its pursuit of nuclear energy that can be used for military purposes.
“They’re very experienced negotiators, and we have to ensure that any deal that is made, any agreement that is made, is one that definitively prevents them from sprinting towards a nuclear weapon at any point,” Rubio said this week.
The administration has signaled that proposals from Tehran have gotten incrementally better as the negotiations have dragged on, but that disorganization of leadership has complicated the process.
“One of the impediments here is that our negotiators aren’t just negotiating with Iranians,” Rubio said. “Those Iranians then have to negotiate with other Iranians in order to figure out what they can agree to, what they can offer, what they’re willing to do, even who they’re willing to meet with.”
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Trump is butting up against the end of the 60-day legality window for Operation Epic Fury as laid out in the War Powers Resolution of 1973.
If he cannot secure congressional approval to continue the campaign, he may be able to grant himself a one-time extension of 30 days that would limit his ability to conduct offensive operations.