White House: Trump has discussed new Iran proposal with aides

Rubio rejects new Iranian proposal to reopen Strait of Hormuz, with future of talks in limbo

Iran’s plan is ‘We’ll blow you up and you pay us,’ says top US diplomat; tanker traffic muted in strait, which Iran says it controls; Germany’s Merz: Iran ‘humiliating’ US in talks

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that a reported recent offer from Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz under strict conditions is not acceptable to the United States or other countries.

Speaking in an interview with Fox News, Rubio said Iran has a different view of the strategic waterway than most of the rest of the world does: “What they mean by opening the straits is, yes, the straits are open, as long as you coordinate with Iran, get our permission, or we’ll blow you up, and you pay us.”

“That’s not opening the straits,” the top US diplomat said. “Those are international waterways. They cannot normalize, nor can we tolerate them trying to normalize, a system in which the Iranians decide who gets to use them.”

Rubio’s statement came after Axios reported that Iran had proposed an agreement on reopening the strait and ending the war, while delaying negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program for a later stage.

Later Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Trump had discussed a new proposal from Iran with top national security aides, while also indicating that Washington was not fully satisfied with what Tehran was offering.

“I wouldn’t say they were considering it,” Leavitt adds, regarding an Iranian suggestion to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for ending the US blockade. “I would say there’s a discussion.”

Separately, Iran insisted it was still in control of the strait, a key pathway for the global oil supply.

Negotiations between the sides were meant to take place in Pakistan last week, during an ongoing ceasefire in the US-Israeli war with Iran, but the talks did not come together. According to Axios, Iran’s attempt to kickstart negotiations again by solving the issues centered on the Strait of Hormuz was conveyed to the US by Pakistani mediators.

US President Donald Trump was expected to discuss the Iranian proposal and other issues held up in the stalled negotiations during a Situation Room meeting with national security and foreign policy teams on Monday, the report added.

The path forward for negotiations remains unclear. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi signaled on Monday that Iran was not desperate for talks. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Monday that Iran was “humiliating” the US in the drama surrounding the talks.

Araghchi says Trump pushing for talks, Iran ‘stable’

Hopes of reviving peace efforts have receded since Saturday, when Trump scrapped a visit by his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.

Araghchi traveled to Russia on Monday. In Saint Petersburg, he said that Tehran is looking into Trump’s request for negotiations, according to a post on his Telegram account.

He told reporters that Trump requested negotiations because the US has not achieved any of its objectives in the war, and said that the Islamic Republic is “stable, solid” during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Russian state TV.

Due to the war with the United States and Israel, “the world has now realized Iran’s true power,” he claimed, and “it has become clear that the Islamic Republic of Iran is a stable, solid, and powerful system.”

“For our part, we will do everything that serves your interests and the interests of all the peoples of the region to ensure that peace is achieved as quickly as possible,” Putin told Araghchi, according to Russian state media.

“Last week, I received a message from Iran’s supreme leader. I would like to ask you to convey my most sincere thanks for this and to confirm that Russia, like Iran, intends to continue our strategic relationship,” Putin added in a reference to Iran’s new leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not been seen or heard publicly since being appointed last month.

Germany’s Merz says Iran ‘humiliating’ US in talks

Meanwhile, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Monday that Iran’s leadership was humiliating the US during the negotiations by getting American officials to travel to Pakistan and then leave without results, in an unusually abrupt rebuke over the conflict.

Merz also said he did not see what exit strategy the US was pursuing in the Iran war, comments that underlined deep divisions between Washington and its European NATO allies, which had already been festering over the Ukraine war and other issues.

“The Iranians are obviously very skilled at negotiating, or rather, very skillful at not negotiating, letting the Americans travel to Islamabad and then leave again without any result,” he said during a talk to students in the town of Marsberg.

“An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, especially by these so-called Revolutionary Guards. And so I hope that this ends as quickly as possible,” he added at the venue in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Trump has harshly criticized NATO allies for not sending their navies to help open the Strait of Hormuz during the conflict.

Merz said it was evident the Strait of Hormuz had been at least partially mined. “We have offered, also as Europeans, to send German minesweepers to clear the strait, which has obviously been mined in part,” he said.

He said the conflict was costing Germany “a lot of money, a lot of taxpayers’ money and a lot of economic strength.”

Merz reiterated that Germans and Europeans were not consulted before the US and Israel started attacking Iran in late February, and that he had conveyed his skepticism directly to Trump afterwards.

“If I had known that it would continue like this for five or six weeks and get progressively worse, I would have told him even more emphatically,” Merz said, comparing the conflict to previous US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Iran’s military insists it is still in control of Hormuz

Maritime traffic in the strait remained muted Monday, as Iran’s military asserted that it still controls the waterway, and would remain in control under a new law proposed in Tehran’s parliament.

Despite the ongoing US blockade, top Iranian security official Ebrahim Azizi asserted Monday that the country’s armed forces are in control of the strait and are seeking to prohibit the passage of “hostile vessels.”

Azizi, the head of the national security commission in Iran’s parliament, said that a new law awaiting approval in parliament would ensure that the military remains the authority responsible for the key waterway after the war ends.

He also said that the proposed law states that financial gains from the strait would be paid in the local rial currency. Azizi did not offer more details on the proposed law or when it is expected to be voted on in parliament.

Meanwhile, shipping data on Monday showed that only some seven ships crossed the strait over the previous day.

The ships, mainly dry bulk vessels, included several leaving from Iraqi ports and one from an Iranian port, according to ship tracking data from Kpler and separate satellite analysis from data analytics specialists SynMax.

Shipping traffic passing through the crucial ‌waterway represents a fraction of the average 140 daily passages before the Iran war began on February 28. US Central Command has redirected 37 vessels since a US blockade of Iranian ports was imposed, the military said on Saturday.

Six Iranian tankers returned to Iranian ports and sailed back through Hormuz in recent days with some 10.5 million barrels of oil, according to satellite analysis from TankerTrackers.com. Around four million barrels of Iranian oil onboard tankers sailed through the US blockade on Friday, according to separate satellite analysis from the tracking site.

Oil prices stay high

Amid the stalled talks, oil prices again rose on Monday, with international oil benchmarks up around two percent, to a two-week high, and staying above $100 a barrel, though European stock markets advanced.

“It may be that hopes of a diplomatic breakthrough were pretty faint to start with, and markets are now in wait-and-see territory ahead of a heavy week of earnings and economic touchpoints,” said Derren Nathan, head of equity research at Hargreaves Lansdown.

As European governments and financial markets look to get a handle on the energy crisis, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Monday that he will host representatives from the Bank of England on Tuesday at a meeting of the government’s emergency response committee focused on the impact of the war in Iran.

“Tomorrow, I’m chairing a meeting of Cobra on the impact [of the war], bringing in people from the Bank of England, so that you can be sure we will stand by working people in this crisis,” Starmer said in a speech to trade union members.

“I have to level with you about Iran, because the truth is, the economic consequences could still be with us for some time,” he added, citing fuel as one example of where prices have risen already.