I
As per the report, Araghchi “slammed some European countries for repeating their incorrect cliches regarding Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, calling their approach unconstructive and irresponsible”.
Iran softens its proposal, but gap between Washington, Tehran remains huge
Trump seems to have rejected the new Iranian proposal “without reading it or being briefed on it”, according to Paul Musgrave, an associate professor of government at Georgetown University in Qatar.
“The news reports on it indicate that there is a slight softening in the proposal, or rather a run-up to discussing the proposal, namely that the Iranian side may have given up its precondition that the US cease its distant blockade of Iranian traffic [in the Strait of Hormuz],” he told Al Jazeera.
“Beyond that, though, a lot of the things that are reportedly in the proposal include maintaining Iran’s sovereign ability to enrich uranium, its nuclear programme and, of course, what it delicately refers to as a ‘control mechanism’ over shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.”
Musgrave said on the two biggest issues – enrichment of uranium and transferring its highly enriched uranium – the US and Iran remain “far, far apart”.
“President Trump has been unyielding that Iran must surrender its nuclear capability,” he said.
The intelligence unit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps says, “The room for US decision-making has narrowed.”
The agency said Tehran has set a deadline for the US military to end its blockade of Iranian ports, without specifying it, and there is a shift in tone against Washington from China, Russia and Europe.
“There is only one way to read this: Trump must choose between an impossible military operation or a bad deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The room for US decision-making has narrowed,” it said in a post on X.
A Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) belonging to Iran’s National Iranian Tanker Company has successfully evaded the US Navy and reached the Asia Pacific, carrying more than 1.9 million barrels of crude oil valued at nearly $220m, according to TankerTrackers.com, Al Jazeera reports.
In a post on X, the monitoring firm identified the vessel as “HUGE” and said it was last sighted off Sri Lanka more than a week ago. The tanker is currently traversing the Lombok Strait of Indonesia towards the Riau Archipelago.
TankerTrackers.com said that HUGE was in Iranian waters on April 13, when the US Navy announced its blockade on Iranian ports. It said HUGE had not transmitted on the Automatic Identification System (AIS) since March 20, when it departed the Strait of Malacca for Iran.
The report comes after Iranian state media claimed on April 29 that at least 52 Iranian ships had breached the US blockade. The US military, meanwhile, has said it has forced some 41 Iran-linked vessels to reverse course since the blockade began.