Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived in St. Petersburg on Monday after President Donald Trump canceled U.S. envoys’ trip to Pakistan.
Call me.
That’s President Donald Trump’s message to Iran, with peace talks stalled and the two countries engaged in a standoff over the Strait of Hormuz that saw energy prices surge again Monday.
Trump urged Tehran to phone when it wants a deal, after scrapping a planned trip by his envoys that has left face-to-face diplomacy at an impasse.
Stood up by the American delegation, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi flew to Russia on Monday to meet with President Vladimir Putin.
“Iran is resisting the biggest superpower in the world,” Araghchi said after meeting Putin, according to Russian state media. The United States, he added, hasn’t “achieved a single goal. That’s why” Trump is “asking for negotiations, and we’re considering it.”
Putin said he saw “how courageously and heroically the people of Iran are fighting for their independence” and told the Iranian foreign minister that Russia would “do everything that serves your interests and the interests of all the peoples of the region.”
The Russian president said he received a message last week from Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who was appointed after his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in an airstrike and was wounded in a bombing himself. Putin wished Khamenei “the very best, good health and well-being.”
While in Russia, Araghchi also blamed “America’s excessive demands and incorrect approaches” for causing peace talks to falter — even if he did laud his “very good” and “constructive” trip to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital that has emerged as a hub of diplomacy.
Trump last week indefinitely extended the ceasefire in the war he launched alongside Israel two months ago.
But a first round of direct talks in Islamabad failed to reach a deal to end the conflict, and the two sides remain at odds in many of their core demands.
Trump took action Saturday, posting on Truth Social that he was calling off his envoys’ trip to Pakistan as there had been “too much time wasted on traveling, too much work!”
Trump added that the U.S. had “all the cards, they have none! If they want to talk, all they have to do is call!!!”
Trump later told reporters that within 10 minutes of him scrapping the trip, Iran sent a “much better” proposal. Speaking to Fox News’ “Sunday Briefing,” Trump said that “if they want to talk, they can come to us, or they can call us. You know, there is a telephone. We have nice secure lines.”
He also outlined his case that the U.S. blockade is pressuring Iran by preventing it from raising crucial funds by selling oil, while also potentially creating a situation where Tehran has to halt production because it has nowhere to store the oil.
Iran has presented a proposal to the U.S. that would focus on opening the Strait of Hormuz and ending the war but would table thorny discussions around Iran’s nuclear program until a later date, a Gulf source and a regional source told NBC News. The details of the proposal were first reported by Axios.
The Iranian proposal was discussed Monday in a meeting between Trump and his national security team, according to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, although it was not immediately clear how seriously it was being weighed. The U.S. demand for Iran to halt its nuclear enrichment program has been a key roadblock in negotiations.
“The President’s red lines with respect to Iran have been made very, very clear, not just to the American public, but also to them as well,” Leavitt said on Monday. “I wouldn’t say they’re considering it. I would just say that there was a discussion this morning that I don’t want to get ahead of.”
She added, “You’ll hear directly from the president, I’m sure, on this topic very soon.”
Members of the Gulf Cooperation Council will hold a meeting Tuesday where the Iranian proposal will also be discussed, according to two Gulf officials. While constraining Iran’s nuclear program is critical to the Trump administration, opening the Strait of Hormuz and restarting the flow of oil remains the priority for Gulf allies.
On Monday, Trump was expected to convene a meeting of his top national security officials over Iran, according to a source familiar with the situation and a U.S. official. That included efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Asked about a meeting, White House spokesperson Olivia Wales declined to comment on the “sensitive diplomatic discussions.”
Iran has shown little sign of caving yet, wielding its stranglehold over the Strait of Hormuz to pressure the global economy.
Shipping remains at an effective standstill in the vital waterway that previously carried one-fifth of the world’s oil, and other essential products such as fertilizers needed for the global food supply.
The international benchmark price for oil, brent crude, rose again to $107 a barrel Monday, while U.S. gas prices climbed to $4.11 a gallon.
Some world leaders are taking a dim view of Trump’s negotiating tactics.
“An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, especially by these so-called Revolutionary Guards,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said during a talk to students Monday. “The Iranians are obviously very skilled at negotiating, or rather, very skillful at not negotiating, letting the Americans travel to Islamabad and then leave again without any result.”
After leaving Islamabad, Araghchi flew to Oman, another mediator that also shares the strait with Iran, before landing in Russia.
The trip was a “valuable opportunity to discuss developments in the war and review the latest situation,” he said.
Before the Putin meeting, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that “the importance of this conversation is difficult to overestimate in terms of how the situation around Iran and in the Middle East is developing.
NBC
