Vehicles drive under billboards showing portraits of the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, foreground, and his son Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the successor to him, along a highway in Tehran, Iran, on March 24, 2026.
| Photo Credit: AP
Iran on Wednesday (March 25, 2026) dismissed a U.S. proposal to end the war and set out its own terms for peace, even as it continued trading fire with Israel.
The U.S. proposal offered a ceasefire and sanctions relief in return for Tehran abandoning its nuclear programme and reopening the Strait of Hormuz. According to state-run Press TV, Iran has laid down five conditions to end the war, which the U.S. and Israel launched on February 28 with the assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several other leaders. Tehran is seeking: “a complete halt to aggression and assassinations; “concrete mechanisms” to prevent future attacks; payment of war damages and reparations; an end to fighting on “all fronts”; and recognition of its “exercise of sovereignty” over the Strait of Hormuz, which it calls its “natural and legal right”.
Iran-Israel war updates on March 25, 2026
“Iran will end the war when it decides to do so and when its own conditions are met,” a senior security official said, according to Press TV. The official, who is not named in the report, said Washington has put forward proposals through various diplomatic channels that are “excessive” and “disconnected from reality” on the battlefield.
The Associated Press earlier cited two Pakistani officials as saying that Islamabad had delivered the U.S. plan to Tehran. The proposal addresses sanctions relief, a rollback of Iran’s nuclear programme, limits on its missile programme, reopening the Strait of Hormuz and restrictions on Iran’s support for non-state militias in West Asia such as Hezbollah and Hamas, said the officials.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who on Monday (March 23, 2026) backed off from an earlier threat to attack Iran’s power infrastructure claiming that Washington and Tehran were in talks, said on Tuesday (March 24, 20260 at the Oval Office that Iran had given him “a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money”, adding that “we are dealing with the right people”. Without elaborating on the “present”, Mr. Trump, who had earlier claimed the U.S. had “productive talks” with Iran, said: I think we’re going to end [the war].”
The comments from Mr. Trump, who has put off his threatened strikes until Friday, came amid reports that the Pentagon was planning to deploy thousands of troops from the elite 82nd Airborne Division to West Asia.
“We are closely monitoring all U.S. movements in the region, especially troop deployments,” Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf said on Wednesday in a social media post. “What the generals have broke[n], the soldiers can’t fix; instead, they will fall victim to [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s delusions. Do not test our resolve to defend our land,” he added.
Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters on Wednesday dismissed reports about talks between Washington and Tehran, adding that the U.S. is calling its “defeat” an agreement. “If the self-proclaimed superpower of the world could have escaped this predicament, it would have done so by now. Do not call your defeat an agreement,” Central Headquarters spokesperson Lt. Col. Ebrahim Zolfaqari said in a video statement. “Has the level of your infighting reached the point of negotiating with yourselves?” he asked, sarcastically.
While the U.S. and Iran issued contradicting claims about talks, Tehran and Tel Aviv continued to attack each other on Wednesday. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said that it targeted Iran’s “sole facility” for the development of submarines, and other weapons manufacturing sites in Isfahan. The IDF also hit Iranian air defence systems, the military added. Since the beginning of the war, Israel has dropped more than 15,000 bombs across Iran, according to Defence Minister Israel Katz. Iran fired at least 13 salvos of missiles at Israel on Tuesday (March 24, 2026), in which nine people were wounded.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said in a statement on Wednesday (March 25, 2026) that it launched missiles at central and northern Israel as well as U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf region. “Strategic points and military centers located in the northern occupied territories were smashed under the heavy and sustained missile attacks of the IRGC’s Aerospace Force,” the Guards said.
U.S. military bases of Ali al-Salem and Arifjan in Kuwait, al-Azraq in Jordan, and Sheikh Isa in Bahrain, were also struck with “liquid- and solid-fuel precision missiles and attack drones”, the IRGC claimed.
Published – March 25, 2026 09:59 pm IST
