Trump turns down Iran’s offer to reopen Hormuz within a week, calling the terms unacceptable

President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House on Saturday 26 September, before flying to Knoxville for the Texas–Tennessee game, that he had turned down an Iranian proposal relayed through mediators. “I reject their proposal,” he said, in remarks carried by the Washington Post and the Washington Times. “They want to make a deal where they open the strait immediately because they’re losing so badly. … We’re winning tremendously,” he told the Washington Times, adding: “They want to make a deal, and I think that’s fine. I like making a deal too, but that deal would not be acceptable.” Al Arabiya English rendered the same position more compactly: “Iran wants a deal, I want a deal, but the proposal is unacceptable.” The remarks were on camera and reported independently by the Post, NPR, UPI, Al Arabiya and the Washington Times.

The offer itself was set out publicly by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi at the UN General Assembly on Friday 25 September. “If certain conditions are met, the Strait of Hormuz will be open at the end of seven days, and talks will be restarted,” he said, in UPI’s rendering. Per summaries by Al Jazeera and The Business Standard, initial steps would take four to five days, the strait would reopen on day six, and direct US–Iran talks including the nuclear file would begin on day seven. Tehran’s conditions: lift the US naval blockade of Iranian ports, waive sanctions on petroleum exports, unfreeze roughly $12 billion in Iranian assets, and halt what Tehran calls American acts of aggression and economic warfare. The package also sought a regional ceasefire covering Lebanon and Yemen. No US official has confirmed the text; the terms remain Iran’s account of Iran’s own offer. NPR’s framing is that the proposal resembles the memorandum of understanding reached in June.

Two anonymously sourced reports published the same day both point away from tactical haggling. UPI, summarising a Wall Street Journal report it attributes to unnamed aides, says Trump told advisers he plans to resume attacks on Iran after the November midterm elections; The Files has not seen the Journal’s original text. Al Arabiya English, citing a single unnamed “US source,” reports that Trump told his negotiating team there would be no return to the June memorandum, that “Iranian negotiators are not decision makers,” and that he regards economic pressure as more effective than a deal on Tehran’s current terms — a leak about US–Iran diplomacy carried by a Saudi-owned broadcaster, which is context a Gulf reader should weigh. On Saturday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told Al Jazeera: “We have no trust in the American side and do not know on what basis an understanding can be reached with it.”

Assessment: Read the Washington Times transcript closely: Trump’s stated objection is that Iran wants the strait open “immediately.” That is an argument about sequencing and about what Washington surrenders first, not a refusal to see Hormuz reopened. It leaves the architecture Araghchi described — blockade lifted against passage restored — intact as a bargaining frame. The two leaks point the same direction, which is either corroboration or a single line placed twice; both rest on unnamed sources and neither has been matched by an on-the-record US official. Distrust the tidy version in which the rejection settles anything. Watch instead whether Tehran treats its own seven-day clock, started Friday, as expiring.