Iran on Wednesday dismissed an American plan to pause the war in the Middle East and launched more attacks on Israel and Gulf Arab countries, including an assault that sparked a huge fire at Kuwait International Airport.
Iran’s defiance came as Israel launched airstrikes on Tehran and as the United States deployed paratroopers and more Marines to the region.
Iranian state television’s English-language broadcaster, Press TV, quoted an anonymous official as saying Iran rejected the U.S.’s ceasefire proposal. The report came after Pakistan transmitted the proposal to Iran.
“Iran will end the war when it decides to do so and when its own conditions are met,” Press TV quoted the official as saying. The official added Tehran will continue its “heavy blows” across the Mideast.
Earlier, two Pakistani officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to release details, described the 15-point plan broadly as touching on sanctions relief, civilian nuclear co-operation, a rollback of Iran’s nuclear program, monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency, missile limits and access for shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
Some of those points were non-starters in negotiations before the war: Iran has insisted it won’t discuss its ballistic missile program or its support of regional militias, which it views as key to its security. And its ability to control passage through the Strait of Hormuz represents one of its biggest strategic advantages.
U.S. President Donald Trump has said that American officials are in negotiations with Iran, though hasn’t said who they are in contact with. Iran had appeared to deny that any talks were ongoing.
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Many unanswered questions about negotiations
Iran’s attacks on regional energy infrastructure and its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil is usually shipped, has sent oil prices skyrocketing and rocked world markets over fears of a global energy crisis.
As a result, Pakistan is not alone in seeking an end to the hostilities. Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty on Wednesday told U.S. envoy Massad Boulos there needs to be “concerted regional and international efforts to de-escalate the situation.”
In a strong statement Wednesday, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres blasted the various factions of the ongoing conflict, saying the fighting “has broken past limits even leaders thought imaginable.”
He specifically called on the U.S. and Israel, whose joint strikes last month started the war against Iran, to end the fighting as “human suffering deepens, civilian casualties mount, and the global economic impact is increasingly devastating.”
He added, “My message to Iran is to stop attacking their neighbours.”
Guterres also announced the appointment of a veteran French diplomat, Jean Arnault, to be his personal envoy on the conflict in the Middle East.
U.S. President Donald Trump said there’s been progress in negotiations with Iran, including a ‘present’ to do with the Strait of Hormuz, as attacks continued throughout the Middle East.
Any talks between the U.S. and Iran face monumental challenges. Many of Washington’s shifting objectives, particularly over Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs, remain difficult to achieve.
Iran remains highly suspicious of the United States, which twice under the Trump administration has attacked during high-level diplomatic talks, including with the strikes that started the current war.
It’s not clear who in Iran’s government has the authority to negotiate — or would be willing to, as Israel has vowed to continue killing the country’s leaders.
As well, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested that it won’t be Washington that dictates an end to Israel’s military campaign against Iran and its proxy militant groups.
Even as Trump has talked of negotiations, the U.S. is preparing to send at least 1,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division to the Mideast in the coming days, three people with knowledge of the plans told The Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military plans.
The Pentagon is also in the process of deploying two marine units that will add about 5,000 marines and thousands of sailors to the region.
Israel launches new strikes
The Israeli military said early Wednesday it had begun new wide-scale attacks on Iran targeting government infrastructure, and witnesses reported airstrikes in the northwestern city of Qazvin.
By afternoon, it said it had completed several waves of airstrikes in Tehran.
“There have been some days when the bombings are so intense you can’t do anything,” a 26-year-old graduate student in Tehran said, adding his friends mostly stayed at home. He spoke to AP on condition of anonymity because of security fears.
The Israeli army also said that as part of its strikes a day earlier it targeted an Iranian submarine development centre in Isfahan.
Missile alert sirens began early in the morning in Israel as Iran launched its own attacks, which have been a daily occurrence since Israel and the U.S. attacked Iran on Feb. 28 to start the war.
Meanwhile, drone and rocket fire from the Iran-back Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon continued unabated. Since entering the fighting, the group has fired rockets into northern Israel around the clock each day, disrupting the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
Iran also kept up the pressure on its Gulf Arab neighbours, with Saudi Arabia’s Defence Ministry saying it had destroyed at least eight drones in the kingdom’s oil-rich Eastern Province, and missile alert sirens sounding in Bahrain.
Kuwait said it shot down multiple drones but one hit a fuel tank at Kuwait International Airport, sparking a fire, the General Civil Aviation Authority said. Firefighters were working to contain the blaze.
Kuwait’s ambassador Naser Abdullah H. M. Alhayen told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Wednesday that Iranian attacks on Gulf Arab states’ infrastructure posed an “existential threat.”
The United Nations’ top rights official Volker Turk described the situation as extremely dangerous and unpredictable.
“Attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure must end. If they are deliberate, such attacks may constitute war crimes,” Turk told the council.
Iran’s death toll has surpassed 1,500, its Health Ministry has said. In Israel, 16 people have been killed. At least 13 U.S. military members have been killed, along with more than a dozen civilians in the occupied West Bank and Gulf Arab states.
Authorities in Lebanon say Israeli strikes have killed more than 1,000 people there, while displacing more than one million.
Donald Trump seemed thrilled when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed on day one of the war, but diplomats and military experts say the U.S. underestimated the Iranian resolve. For The National, CBC’s Terence McKenna explores the American miscalculations and how they could shape war’s endgame.