Trump expects more talks after rejecting latest Iranian proposal

President Trump said Sunday he expects U.S. officials to negotiate further with their Iranian counterparts this week, after he rejected a seven-day ceasefire proposal from Tehran.

“I expect more talks with Iran [this week]. They want to make a deal, but it is not the deal that I want to make,” Trump told Axios in a phone interview. “It is what we would have maybe agreed to a year ago. They overplayed their hand.”

The president added that he is “always thinking” about resuming strikes on Iran, as the war hits the seven-month mark on Monday.

Trump turned down a seven-day ceasefire proposal from Iranian officials, telling reporters on Saturday that negotiators from the Islamic Republic “want to make a deal where they open” the Strait of Hormuz “immediately.”

The Iranian military’s restrictions on shipping in the key waterway have rocked the global oil trade. Brent crude, the international benchmark, is trading at more than $107 per barrel as of Monday.

“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,” the president said Saturday of the Iranian proposal.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz backed Trump up on Sunday that the Iranians asked for “ everything up front ” as part of a short-term ceasefire.

Waltz, in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” echoed the president in saying the Iranians are “miscalculating” Trump’s consideration of the midterm elections during the war. But Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday that he and his fellow government officials “don’t care” about the U.S. election.

“We don’t care about any other things. We care about our national interests,” Araghchi told “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker on NBC. “We are ready to negotiate as much as we are ready to face any challenge.”

“We stand firm in the face of any aggression against us, even if it comes to a doomsday war,” he continued. “At the same time, we are ready for diplomacy.”