After US President Donald Trump publicly derided as “totally unacceptable” Iran’s response to the latest American offer to end the war, Tehran says its response was a rejection of the US proposal.
Iranian state television reports that Tehran rejected the proposal as amounting to “surrender,” insisting instead on “war reparations by the US, full Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, an end to sanctions, and the release of seized Iranian assets.”
The response also calls on the US to end its naval blockade, guarantee no further attacks and end a US ban on Iranian oil sales, the semi-official Tasnim news agency says.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to admit neither Israel nor the US foresaw the effective use Iran would make of its control of the Hormuz Strait before the recent war began.
“I don’t claim perfect foresight, and nobody had perfect foresight. Neither did the Iranians,” Netanyahu tells CBS’s “60 Minutes,” after being asked about a New York Times report that he had predicted that Tehran would be too weakened by the US-Israeli airstrikes to choke off the strategic waterway.
Netanyahu is also asked about a New York Times report that he had told a situation room on February 11 that a joint Israeli-American operation could collapse the Islamic Republic.
The premier calls that “false” but goes on to note that he merely didn’t note that outcome as definitive. “We both agreed that there was uncertainty and risk involved,” Netanyahu says, quoting US President Donald Trump as having said that there is danger in action but bigger danger in not acting.
The premier says he doesn’t know when or if the Iranian regime will fall, but says that if that happens, it would mean the end of its network of proxies, including Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis, since it is the “scaffolding” keeping them afloat.
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