Iran rejects 45-day ceasefire proposal as Trump’s deadline nears

The president has warned Iran that the U.S. could set the country ‘back to the Stone Ages.’

People drive their motorbikes past a billboard that shows a graphic depicting Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei in downtown Tehran, Iran, on Monday, April 6, 2026. [Photo: Vahid Salemi/AP Photo]

Iran on Monday rejected a 45-day ceasefire proposal and said it wants a permanent end to the war, even as Israel attacked a major gas field and U.S. President Donald Trump’s ultimatum to open the Strait of Hormuz loomed.

“We only accept an end of the war with guarantees that we won’t be attacked again,” Mojtaba Ferdousi Pour, head of Iran’s diplomatic mission in Cairo, told The Associated Press. He said Iran no longer trusts the Trump administration after the U.S. bombed the Islamic Republic twice during previous rounds of talks.

Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency said Tehran conveyed its response through Pakistan, a key mediator.

And yet a regional official involved in talks said efforts had not collapsed. “We are still talking to both sides,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss closed-door diplomacy.

Ferdousi Pour said Iranian and Omani officials were working on a mechanism for administrating the strait, through which a fifth of the world’s oil is shipped in peacetime. Iran’s grip on it has shaken the world economy. Tehran has refused to let U.S. and Israeli vessels through after they started the war on Feb. 28.

Israel strikes massive gas field, and Trump sets deadline

Iran’s rejection came after Israel struck a key petrochemical plant in the South Pars natural gas field and killed two paramilitary Revolutionary Guard commanders.

The gas field attack aimed at eliminating a major source of revenue for Iran, Israel said. The field, the world’s largest, is shared with Qatar. It is critical to electricity production, but the strike appeared to be separate from Trump’s threats.

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