Trump warns Iran clock is ticking

Donald Trump warned Iran on Sunday that “the clock is ticking” as Pakistani-mediated talks aimed at ending the war stall, according to the BBC. Writing on Truth Social, the US president said Tehran needed to move fast or “there won’t be anything left of them”, as he prepared to speak with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The immediate dispute is procedural—whose last proposal counts, and what concessions are real—but the bargaining positions described by Iranian state-linked outlets and the BBC are incompatible in ways that are hard to paper over with sequencing. Iranian media said Washington had offered no concrete concessions in response to Tehran’s latest demands; Mehr, a semi-official agency, warned that a lack of compromise would produce an impasse. Tasnim, another semi-official outlet, said Iran’s proposals included an immediate end to the war “on all fronts”, an end to the US naval blockade of Iranian ports, guarantees against further attacks, and compensation for damage—alongside language asserting Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz.

Fars, also semi-official, reported that Washington replied with five conditions, including keeping only one nuclear site operational and transferring Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium to the US. That is the kind of demand that turns a ceasefire into a compliance regime: it requires verification, custody, and enforcement mechanisms that are themselves politically explosive in Tehran, and operationally dependent on sustained Western leverage.

Trump’s own public line has also moved. The BBC notes that he had earlier threatened that a “whole civilisation” would die unless Iran agreed to a deal, shortly before an early-April ceasefire was announced. Later he described the truce as being on “massive life support” after rejecting Tehran’s demands as “totally unacceptable”. On Friday he suggested he could accept a 20-year suspension of Iran’s nuclear programme—short of the total end he had previously demanded—an adjustment that may widen the gap with Israeli war aims even as it narrows the gap with what Iran can sell domestically.

The ceasefire has largely held despite occasional exchanges of fire, but the negotiating agenda now includes items that are not just about nuclear limits. A blockade, compensation, and Hormuz all put oil flows and shipping insurance into the same basket as uranium and centrifuges. The longer those issues remain fused, the more each side can portray economic pain as proof the other is failing first.

Trump’s warning did not include a deadline. The war, by contrast, already has one: the next time a ship tries to pass through the Strait of Hormuz under contested rules.