Iran says it has received a U.S. counterproposal to its seven-day ceasefire plan, the same plan the White House rejected.
That is according to a CBS News broadcast. The counteroffer aims to restart negotiations in a war the anchor said has raged for seven months. It also includes a phased reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
The recap: President Trump has claimed Iran overplayed its hand because it is losing badly. Then Iran said an American answer arrived anyway. The New York Post also reports that Iran has received an official U.S. response to its latest offer, despite Trump's public rejection.
The broadcast did not say when Iran received the counterproposal. It also gave no calendar dates for Trump's rejection or his comments.
Trump rejected the deal outright. The talks kept going anyway.
CBS News White House reporter Olivia Rinaldi said Trump was asked earlier in the broadcast day what the counterproposal actually contains. She said he answered that the U.S. is studying the proposal Tehran had given. By her account, he did not expand on what is in the American offer.
Rinaldi noted this is the same Iranian proposal Trump said earlier this week he would not accept. She said Trump rejected it outright, but conversations are apparently still happening. "We do know that there are indirect talks happening," she said.
Developing, unverified: the contents of the U.S. counterproposal beyond the Hormuz reopening, and who is carrying messages between the two sides. Neither was detailed on air.
You can see the problem. The White House says no in public and Iran says it has a reply in hand. Nobody on the record will say what Washington wants.
Tehran is not softening in public. During the broadcast, an IRGC spokesperson said the war will not end unless Washington admits defeat and leaves the region. Fox News, citing Iranian state media, separately reports that Iran's Supreme National Security Council secretary, Mohsen Rezaei, said Trump "can neither negotiate nor fight." That is Iranian officials' characterization, not established fact.
The financial blog ZeroHedge adds an Iranian lawmaker's claim that no negotiations will begin until the U.S. meets its commitments under the Islamabad understanding. It attributes the claim to a lawmaker named Ebrahim Rezaei. The broadcast did not mention that understanding.
The counteroffer is now in Tehran's hands. The IRGC's stated price for ending the war is a U.S. admission of defeat and a U.S. exit from the region.