The offer compresses a seven-day timeline that Tehran first put to Washington through Qatar in September.
Iran said on Monday it was ready to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within two days if the United States accepted its conditions, according to Euronews. The offer compresses a seven-day timeline that Tehran first put to Washington through Qatar in September. Foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei described the shorter window as "another indication of Iran's good-faith approach", saying that if Iran's demands were met it would be possible to restore security to the strait and resume the negotiating process within a short period.
The conditions are substantial. They include ending the war on all fronts, unfreezing Iranian assets abroad, lifting sanctions on the oil sector and ending the US naval blockade of Iranian ports. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, in an Al Jazeera interview released on Sunday, added further requirements: Washington must accept a new transit route through the strait agreed between Iran and Oman, reduce US troop numbers in the region and remove sanctions imposed since August. Baghaei said an exchange of messages was ongoing via mediators and that "everything depends" on the US side accepting Iran's demands. "Only then can we discuss the subsequent stages," he said.
The context is a war that began in late February. Since then, according to the report, Tehran has claimed it maintained control over Hormuz and regularly targeted vessels attempting to cross without its authorisation, while the US imposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports. Washington has described its measures from August onwards as the "economic asphyxiation" of Iran. US military command CENTCOM rejected Iranian claims that its strikes had targeted only military objectives, saying on X that Iran had deliberately hit residential areas, civilian centres and civilian sailors in international waters, and that its attacks had killed at least 20 people.
Diplomacy is moving on several tracks at once. Iran's deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, travelled to Doha on Monday to help draft a preliminary agreement, with Qatar acting as mediator. China said it was sending special envoy Zhai Jun to Iran, Oman and Saudi Arabia to press all sides to halt the fighting, and President Xi Jinping said the Middle East and Gulf must not become an arena for great-power competition. Beijing and Muscat jointly called on Washington and Tehran to return to the "Islamabad memorandum of understanding", Chinese state media reported.
Alongside the diplomacy, threats have intensified. Trump said on Saturday he still had to "take care" of one or two targets, including Pickaxe mountain in central Iran, a site Washington suspects houses nuclear infrastructure, which Tehran denies. Baghaei warned that any act of aggression against Iran, by whatever means, would be met with a powerful, immediate and comprehensive response. Deputy parliament speaker Ali Nikzad said Iran would not enter nuclear negotiations under pressure, and Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, said he had received a letter from US Vice President JD Vance but had not yet replied.
What is not confirmed is whether Washington will engage with the conditions as presented, or whether the two-day figure is anything more than a negotiating gesture. The timing is awkward: the announcement falls ahead of US midterm elections on Tuesday, with economic pressures linked to the war weighing on Republican prospects. The release of results on Wednesday coincides with the anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the US embassy in Tehran, and Tehran-organised demonstrations against the US are expected. In Bahrain, Anwar Gargash, adviser to the UAE president, told the Manama Dialogue that Abu Dhabi did not want a prolonged crisis with Iran but acknowledged that trust had been lost. "This damage was not caused by us," he said. "Rather, following Iran's attack on us, trust was damaged."
