Category: News

Iranian officials indicated Wednesday they have received an official U.S. response to Tehran’s latest proposal to end the seven-month war, which U.S. President Donald Trump had publicly rejected just days earlier.

The officials did not say what the response contained and whether it was a rejection.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi presented the U.S. response to President Masoud Pezeshkian at a Cabinet meeting, government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani told the state-run IRNA news agency.

“We will make every effort to bring the agreement to fruition and will firmly stand up for the rights of the Iranian people,” Pezeshkian said. “The agreement must now be based on a win-win strategy.”

The Cabinet meeting followed Araghchi’s return to Iran after travelling to New York for last week’s U.N. General Assembly, where officials held indirect talks with U.S. officials and also met with Qatari and Pakistani mediators on the sidelines of the annual gathering of world leaders.

Araghchi briefed the Cabinet on his trip to New York and the meetings he held there, including Iran’s conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which Mohajerani said had been conveyed through mediators.

Araghchi last week said he floated the proposal to reopen the strait in a week if the U.S. agreed to lift its blockade of Iranian ports, release frozen Iranian assets and waive sanctions on Iranian oil sales, among other conditions.

Trump swiftly rejected the proposal, saying Iran wanted to make a deal because it was “losing so badly” but that its offer “would not be acceptable.” Despite Trump’s public rebuffing, mediators continued working with Iran and the U.S. to try to broker a deal to end the fighting and open the strait, according to officials who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury Department unveiled new sanctions on Tuesday targeting people and companies around the globe that it accuses of being financial facilitators or enablers of Iran’s military supply chain.

The latest action is part of the Trump administration’s “Operation Economic Outcast” campaign aimed at severing “critical financial lifelines” for the already heavily sanctioned Iranian government.

Ten people and entities based in Iran, Hong Kong and Pakistan now face sanctions over accusations of procuring weapons and weapon components for Iran’s defense ministry as it fights its now seven-month war against the U.S.

Iran’s economy is spiraling further

Iran’s economy, under heavy strain before the war started, has been in a freefall since the conflict began in late February.

The country’s currency fell to a new record low on Tuesday, with traders in Tehran exchanging more than 2.5 million rials to the U.S. dollar in a stark reflection of how the war in the Middle East has steadily eroded the Iranian economy.

The latest decline came just 27 days after the rial hit its previous record low of 2.2 million to the dollar on Sept. 2. The currency has repeatedly reached new lows since the war began in February.

Trump on Tuesday said that Iran is “failing very badly, very badly” and predicted anew that the war will be “over with very, very soon.”

At the onset of the conflict, he predicted that the war would last just weeks. More recently, Trump said he expects it won’t end until after the Nov. 3 midterm elections in the U.S.

Iranians face soaring prices for medicine amid U.S. blockade, sanctions

Medication prices are soaring in Iran and some treatments have become hard to find, leaving patients and their families scrambling as a U.S. blockade and stepped-up sanctions squeeze the country’s pharmaceuticals industry.

Some medicines have more than tripled in price, further straining Iranians’ finances seven months into the country’s war with the United States and Israel. Prices for food and other goods have skyrocketed even as unemployment has risen and the currency, which hit a record low this week, has lost half its value.

The war has become an economic endurance test. Iran has tried to push world energy prices higher with attacks on the region’s oil shipping routes; the United States, in turn, has aimed to wreck Iran’s economy by blockading its ports since June and slapping it with increasingly tough sanctions.

Iran executes 2 men on charges of violence during January protests

Also on Wednesday, two men were executed in Iran over their role in violence during nationwide anti-government protests in January, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.

Citing the country’s judiciary, IRNA said the men took part in unrest in the northeastern city of Mashhad that left four members of the security forces dead earlier this year. Their death sentences were upheld by Iran’s Supreme Court before being carried out Wednesday morning.

The unrest began Dec. 28 amid anger over Iran’s collapsing currency and worsening economy and quickly spread across the country, with demonstrators increasingly calling for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. Iranian authorities responded with a deadly crackdown.

Rights groups say thousands were killed and tens of thousands arrested, while Iranian authorities have reported a substantially lower death toll.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is considering reducing the scope of a planned border project through Big Bend National Park in Texas, a contentious undertaking that has drawn bipartisan opposition over concerns it will irrevocably mar the remote, majestic area.

The announcement on plans for the national park, made in two court filings late Tuesday, gave no details on what the government may do. In August, the Republican administration initiated a pause on construction-related activity in the park as it engaged in outreach efforts to opponents of the project. The pause ends Wednesday.

Customs and Border Protection is “actively considering adjustments” to the work ”that would reduce its scope and avoid or minimize potential impacts, based on input received from the National Park Service and other stakeholders,” the government said in the court filing.

The agency said it will make a final decision the first week in October and will take “several weeks” after that announcement before any “ground-disturbing work” starts.

After intense opposition from environmentalists and local residents and business owners, CBP backed off plans this year to build a 30-foot-tall bollard wall through the park. But its intention to move forward with other measures such as a new road, lights, vehicle barriers and technology did not quell local resistance.

After bulldozers were spotted in August clearing land in Big Bend, CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott announced a pause on all activity there and it was later expanded to the area upstream of the park. The agency has said it was only carrying out design and planning work, not full-scale construction activities.

Opponents of the border project called on the administration Wednesday to continue the pause while coming up with a new plan.

Bob Krumenaker, head of Keep Big Bend Wild and a former NPS superintendent at the park, said in a statement that the Border Patrol already works with the park service and local sheriffs to operate an “effective surveillance system” in Big Bend that includes ground sensors and patrols. The Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks said building in the park would be “mutilating an extraordinary landscape.”

The project is part of a $46 billion plan by the administration to line the U.S.-Mexico border with steel bollard walls, vehicle barriers and surveillance technology to deter migrants and smugglers.

The government has also paused work on a 61-mile piece of land stretching north of the national park along the Rio Grande River, most of which is owned by private landowners. In that area, the government plans to build a 30-foot-tall steel bollard wall designed to prevent people on foot from crossing, roads and various types of surveillance technology where appropriate, according to the court filing.

CBP has started building the wall in a West Texas part of the broader Big Bend region, but has run into intense opposition there, including from landowners challenging the project in court.

Also in the court filing Tuesday, the government suggested it was facing resistance in getting permission from landowners to survey and build on their property and would be referring some cases to the Department of Justice to pursue condemnation.

The government also detailed efforts it had made to meet with people potentially affected by Big Bend projects and shared with them incidents of cartel-related violence that concerned the Border Patrol.

The administration has been pushing forward with the border wall projects that have long been a key part of President Donald Trump’s vision for border security. The agency said it is building 12 miles of wall per week.

But lining up against the work are private landowners, Native American tribes, environmental groups and others who question the necessity and cost of the project at a time when illegal immigration has fallen dramatically. Opponents also have accused the government of damaging Native American sites and sensitive ecology locations in its rush to finish construction.