Iranian officials indicated Wednesday they have received an official U.S. response to Tehran's latest proposal to end the seven-month war, which U.S. President Donald Trump had publicly rejected just days earlier.
The officials did not say what the response contained and whether it was a rejection.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi presented the U.S. response to President Masoud Pezeshkian at a Cabinet meeting, government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani told the state-run IRNA news agency.
“We will make every effort to bring the agreement to fruition and will firmly stand up for the rights of the Iranian people,” Pezeshkian said. “The agreement must now be based on a win-win strategy.”
The Cabinet meeting followed Araghchi's return to Iran after travelling to New York for last week's U.N. General Assembly, where officials held indirect talks with U.S. officials and also met with Qatari and Pakistani mediators on the sidelines of the annual gathering of world leaders.
Araghchi briefed the Cabinet on his trip to New York and the meetings he held there, including Iran's conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which Mohajerani said had been conveyed through mediators.
Araghchi last week said he floated the proposal to reopen the strait in a week if the U.S. agreed to lift its blockade of Iranian ports, release frozen Iranian assets and waive sanctions on Iranian oil sales, among other conditions.
Trump swiftly rejected the proposal, saying Iran wanted to make a deal because it was "losing so badly" but that its offer "would not be acceptable." Despite Trump's public rebuffing, mediators continued working with Iran and the U.S. to try to broker a deal to end the fighting and open the strait, according to officials who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury Department unveiled new sanctions on Tuesday targeting people and companies around the globe that it accuses of being financial facilitators or enablers of Iran’s military supply chain.
The latest action is part of the Trump administration’s “Operation Economic Outcast” campaign aimed at severing “critical financial lifelines” for the already heavily sanctioned Iranian government.
Ten people and entities based in Iran, Hong Kong and Pakistan now face sanctions over accusations of procuring weapons and weapon components for Iran’s defense ministry as it fights its now seven-month war against the U.S.
Iran's economy is spiraling further
Iran's economy, under heavy strain before the war started, has been in a freefall since the conflict began in late February.
The country's currency fell to a new record low on Tuesday, with traders in Tehran exchanging more than 2.5 million rials to the U.S. dollar in a stark reflection of how the war in the Middle East has steadily eroded the Iranian economy.
The latest decline came just 27 days after the rial hit its previous record low of 2.2 million to the dollar on Sept. 2. The currency has repeatedly reached new lows since the war began in February.
Trump on Tuesday said that Iran is “failing very badly, very badly” and predicted anew that the war will be “over with very, very soon.”
At the onset of the conflict, he predicted that the war would last just weeks. More recently, Trump said he expects it won't end until after the Nov. 3 midterm elections in the U.S.
Iranians face soaring prices for medicine amid US blockade, sanctions
Medication prices are soaring in Iran and some treatments have become hard to find, leaving patients and their families scrambling as a U.S. blockade and stepped-up sanctions squeeze the country's pharmaceuticals industry.
Some medicines have more than tripled in price, further straining Iranians' finances seven months into the country's war with the United States and Israel. Prices for food and other goods have skyrocketed even as unemployment has risen and the currency, which hit a record low this week, has lost half its value.
The war has become an economic endurance test. Iran has tried to push world energy prices higher with attacks on the region’s oil shipping routes; the United States, in turn, has aimed to wreck Iran’s economy by blockading its ports since June and slapping it with increasingly tough sanctions.
Iran executes 2 men on charges of violence during January protests
Also on Wednesday, two men were executed in Iran over their role in violence during nationwide anti-government protests in January, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.
Citing the country's judiciary, IRNA said the men took part in unrest in the northeastern city of Mashhad that left four members of the security forces dead earlier this year. Their death sentences were upheld by Iran’s Supreme Court before being carried out Wednesday morning.
The unrest began Dec. 28 amid anger over Iran’s collapsing currency and worsening economy and quickly spread across the country, with demonstrators increasingly calling for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. Iranian authorities responded with a deadly crackdown.
Rights groups say thousands were killed and tens of thousands arrested, while Iranian authorities have reported a substantially lower death toll.
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