Iran denies Trump’s claim Iranian president requested ceasefire
Donald Trump says US will continue ‘blasting Iran into oblivion’ until Strait of Hormuz is reopened.
A senior Iranian official has denied US President Donald Trump’s claim that Iran’s “new regime president” has asked for a ceasefire, as the United States and Israel continue their war on the country.
Reporting from the Iranian capital on Wednesday, Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem said a senior Iranian official had rejected Trump’s post on social media claiming that, “Iran’s New Regime President … has just asked the United States of America for a CEASEFIRE!”
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“The Iranians are denying that they’ve asked for any ceasefire,” Hashem said.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump earlier on Wednesday had said his administration would consider the purported ceasefire request when the Strait of Hormuz “is open, free, and clear”.
“Until then, we are blasting Iran into oblivion or, as they say, back to the Stone Ages!!!” he wrote.
Trump’s claim comes just hours before he is set to deliver a speech at 9pm local time in Washington, DC, on Wednesday (01:00 GMT on Thursday) to provide what the White House said will be “an important update on Iran”.
The Trump administration has faced mounting pressure over the US-Israeli war on Iran amid soaring global energy prices and widespread opposition to the conflict among the US public.
On Monday, Trump told reporters at the White House that prices would “come tumbling down” whenever the US decides to end the war – something he said could happen within the next two to three weeks.
But the US leader’s threat on Wednesday to continue “blasting Iran into oblivion” until the Strait of Hormuz is reopened has raised questions about whether the war will end as soon as Trump has claimed.
The strait – a critical Gulf waterway through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquified natural gas supplies transit – has been effectively shuttered as a result of the war, raising serious concerns about a global economic downturn.
Mohamad Elmasry, a professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, said Trump, in his Truth Social post on Wednesday, was “giving people hope in one breath and … taking it away in the next”.
“The language that he’s using is very important. Yesterday, he said he wants to bomb Iran back into the Stone Age, and now he’s using this forceful language [about bombing] them into oblivion,” Elmasry told Al Jazeera.
“This is not exactly encouraging, particularly when you consider the context that Israel and the United States have already hit hundreds of schools and hospitals [in Iran] and thousands of residential homes,” he said.
“They are using 2,000-pound [900kg] bombs to take out entire city blocks. So this is not exactly a careful, precision operation. They are knocking out a lot of civilian infrastructure.”
Reporting from the White House, Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher also said Trump is unlikely to announce an immediate end to the war during his Wednesday evening address.
“[Sources] say it’s more likely he’s going to say the war will continue for a couple of weeks, he understands that people are experiencing financial pain … but this is a short-term pain to get through,” Fisher said.
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