US President Donald Trump said on Monday that progress was being made in “serious discussions” with Tehran about ending the war, but warned that the US would destroy Iranian energy sites and infrastructure if a deal is not reached in the near future.

His message came after Iran communicated via intermediaries that it found the demands laid out in Washington’s ceasefire proposal to be “unrealistic, illogical, and excessive,” and reiterated its right to defend itself from US and Israeli attacks.

Trump, in a post on his Truth Social account, said that the United States was “in serious discussions with A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME to end our Military Operations in Iran.”

Trump has insisted more than once that the US and Israel have succeeded in enacting regime change by killing many — but not all — of the Islamic Republic’s top leaders.

Touting the “great progress” that he said had already been made, the president warned, however, that “if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately ‘Open for Business,'” then the US would move ahead with “blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched.'”

Blowing up Iran’s power plants would be “retribution for our many soldiers, and others, that Iran has butchered and killed over the old Regime’s 47 year ‘Reign of Terror,’” he said.

Trump has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran’s energy sites since fighting began on February 28, but has on two separate occasions made a show of pushing off those threats by several days to allow time for negotiations on a ceasefire.

On Thursday, he said he was giving Iran until April 6 to agree to Washington’s proposal to end the war, or else the US would move ahead with the threatened attacks.

Despite Trump’s insistence that a deal would likely be reached, the US has been deploying thousands of troops to the region over the past week in preparation for a potential ground invasion.

Reports have suggested that the preparations for a ground operation may be an attempt to pressure Tehran into acquiescing to American terms to end the war.

Hours after declaring that the US was negotiating with a “new and more reasonable” leadership in Iran, Trump confirmed that the person the US was engaging with was, in fact, hardline Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.

Speaking to the New York Post, Trump said he would know “in about a week” whether Ghalibaf is someone the US can truly work with.

While the parliament speaker, with his hardline background and ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has appeared over the past couple of weeks to be Washington’s preferred conduit, US officials have refrained from identifying him.

Trump has quipped that whoever he publicly names would end up getting killed.

Iran mulls exit from nuclear pact

Meanwhile, Iran confirmed on Monday that it had received the US peace proposals via intermediaries, following talks on Sunday between the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

The summit in Islamabad had focused primarily on proposals to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to shipping.

But Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei seemed to shoot down any optimism that the talks would yield quick results, saying the proposals were “unrealistic, illogical and excessive.”

“Our position is clear. We are under military aggression. Therefore, all our efforts and strength are focused on defending ourselves,” he told a press conference.

Baghaei also said Iran’s parliament was reviewing a possible exit from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which recognizes the right to develop, research, produce and use nuclear energy as long as nuclear weapons are not pursued.

Israel and the US have said that thwarting Iran’s nuclear ambitions was a core part of the decision to launch their joint offensive against the country on February 28. Beyond that, reports have indicated that Washington has conditioned a ceasefire, among other things, on Iran dismantling its existing nuclear capabilities, committing to never pursuing a nuclear weapon, and allowing the UN nuclear watchdog full access to its nuclear sites.

An Iranian withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty would be in direct contradiction to those demands.

Echoing Baghaei’s bravado on Monday, the commander the IRGC’s foreign operations branch, Esmail Qaani, issued a rare message hailing Iranian proxy groups for helping create a “new regional order.”

Qaani became head of the IRGC’s Quds Force after the killing of Qassem Soleimani in a US strike in Iraq in 2020.

His message, just the second attributed to him since the US-Israeli war against the Islamic Republic began on February 28, was posted on X under the handle @general_Qaani, although the social media giant then rapidly suspended the account with a note that “X suspends accounts which violate the X Rules.”

The message was also widely published by Iranian news agencies and state television.

Qaani said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to create a “security belt across the region” but the actions of Tehran-backed groups, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, had “exposed the regime’s false promises.”

“Get used to the new regional order,” he said.

Hezbollah waded into the US-Israel war with Iran by firing rockets at northern Israel on March 2, prompting a renewed Israel offensive against the terror group after more than a year of relative quiet on the Israel-Lebanon border. Hezbollah has continued to fire hundreds of drones and rockets at Israeli civilian and military targets daily since then. The Houthis in Yemen took longer than Hezbollah, but on March 28, they launched a ballistic missile at southern Israel and announced they had entered the fight.

Amid the inflammatory remarks from both sides, a Pakistani security official, whose country is trying to mediate in the war, said that it appeared unlikely there would be direct US-Iran talks this week.

“We are trying our best to make it happen as early as possible,” the official said.

Rubio cautions against premature optimism

Echoing that caution, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Monday that Washington must be prepared for the “probability” that Iran will reject American diplomatic efforts to end the war.

“There are clearly people there talking to us in ways that previous people in charge of Iran have not spoken to us in the past,” Rubio said, adding that the US intends to test Iran’s ability to back up its statements with action.

“But we also have to be prepared for the fact that that effort might fail,” he cautioned, undercutting Trump’s claim that the US has effectively caused regime change by taking out much of Iran’s leadership. “We’re dealing with a 47-year-old regime that still has a lot of people involved in it who aren’t necessarily big fans of diplomacy and peace.”

“If there are new people now in charge who have a more reasonable vision of the future, that would be good news for us, for them, for the entire world,” Rubio said. “But we also have to be prepared for the possibility, maybe even the probability, that that is not the case.”

The oil market did not appear reassured by Trump’s claim that the US and Iran could soon make a deal that would restore calm to the Middle East, with prices continuing to rise.

The Brent crude benchmark rose 66 cents or 0.6% to $113.23 a barrel on Monday afternoon after settling 4.2% higher on Friday, and was on course for a record monthly rise.

The oil market has all but discounted the prospect of a negotiated end to the war and “is bracing for a sharp escalation in military hostilities,” said Vandana Hari of oil-market provider Vanda Insights.

Still, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent insisted on Monday that the global oil market was well supplied.

“Over time, the US is going to retake control of the Straits, and there will be freedom of navigation, whether it is through US escorts or a multinational escort,” Bessent said in an interview with Fox News.

Israel launched its campaign against Iran, alongside the US, to degrade the Iranian regime’s military capabilities, distance threats posed by Iran — including its nuclear and ballistic missile programs — and “create the conditions” for the Iranian people to topple the regime, the military and other Israeli leaders have said.

Since the war began on February 28, 16 Israeli civilians and foreign nationals have been killed in Israel in Iranian ballistic missile attacks, along with four Palestinians in the West Bank.

The Israeli Air Force has conducted hundreds of waves of strikes in Iran, dropping over 13,000 bombs on the Iranian regime and military sites, including air defense systems, ballistic missile launchers, weapon production sites, nuclear facilities, and various headquarters.

The IDF has estimated that some 5,000 Iranian soldiers have been killed in Israeli strikes, along with tens of thousands more wounded, many of them members of the internal security forces and Basij paramilitary force.

Agencies and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.

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