Iran Rejects Ceasefire as Trump Deadline Looms and Strikes Escalate

Iran rejected proposals for a ceasefire to its five-week-long war with the United States and Israel on Monday, calling instead “for a permanent end to the war,” according to the official state news agency IRNA.

Read more: The Strait of Hormuz Crisis Is Driving a Wave of Global Energy Rationing

The dismissal, which Iran said it conveyed to the U.S. via Pakistan, comes on the eve of U.S. President Donald Trump’s deadline to attack Iran’s power plants and transport infrastructure.

“In this response, which consists of ten paragraphs, Iran, based on previous experiences, while rejecting a ceasefire, emphasized the need for a permanent end to the war while respecting Iran's considerations,” IRNA reported. 

IRNA added that Iran’s response includes demands such as “an end to conflicts in the region, a protocol for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, reconstruction [reparation of war damages], and lifting sanctions.”

Iran has responded to U.S. and Israeli strikes by effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial passage between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman through which around a fifth of global oil production flows. 

The closure of the Strait, as well as air and missile strikes on oil and gas facilities on both sides of the Gulf, triggered a sharp rise in global gas and fuel prices, with hikes as high as 20%—30% in the United States and Europe at the pumps.

On April 6, the U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate climbed to $115.48 per barrel, up by 3.5 per cent, and Brent crude rose to almost $112 per barrel.

Trump rejects Iran’s proposal 

Trump, who has threatened to rain "hell" on Tehran if it did not make a deal by 8 p.m. EDT Tuesday to open the vital route for global energy supplies, rejected the Iranian proposal.

"They made a proposal, and it's a significant proposal. It's a significant step. It's not good enough," Trump told reporters on Monday at an annual White House Easter event.

While Iranian officials have not yet made any public comment on the way the talks are going, state media has reported that Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has spent the last 72 hours in a flurry of phone calls with his counterparts from India, Russia, Turkey, Japan, Qatar, France, Egypt and Pakistan, some of whom are said to be acting as intermediaries in talks with the U.S.

Israel says it killed Islamic Revolutionary Guards intelligence chief

Israel said on Monday that it had killed the Revolutionary Guards' intelligence chief, Majid Khademi, in airstrikes on the country. 

“Major General Majid Khademi, the powerful and erudite head of the Intelligence Organization… was martyred in a criminal and terrorist attack by the American-Zionist enemy in the Third Imposed War, at dawn today,” the Guards said in a statement carried by the semi-official Fars news agency.

The Guards' intelligence organization, or SASP, was expanded from a military counterintelligence department into a powerful intelligence apparatus in October 2009 at the orders of Iran's previous supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei following the 2009 Green Movement against the regime.

It steadily grew in strength and reach and as a rival to the Islamic Republic’s intelligence ministry VAJA, which was nominally under the president’s control and answerable to the parliament, a hindrance that did not apply to the SASP head who was directly appointed by the supreme leader, and accountable only to him.

In time it became the primary intelligence apparatus of the state, and its instrument of choice in clamping down on dissidents and critics of the regime.

Khademi had replaced the previous head, Mohammad Kazemi, who had been killed by Israeli airstrikes on 15 June, 2025, when Israel and the United States attacked Iran in what came to be known as the 12-day war. However, it’s not clear how effective the killing of the organization’s chief will be in weakening the state’s capacity for coercion and persecution.

“As we saw before, the death of the Guards’ chief of intelligence had no meaningful effect on their ability to clamp down on protests. Only a few short months later they were able to violently suppress the millions who took to the streets in January,” an analyst inside Iran told Time.

“The Guards have created a multi-tiered command structure in all of its departments and organizations, so that should one commander be killed, he is immediately replaced by a subordinate ready to carry on,” he added.

Petrochemical plants and universities targeted in strikes

The strike on the guards’ intelligence chief was not the only strike of the night. Iran’s ministry of health reported that seven children under the age of 10 were killed in the strikes throughout the country, with the youngest less than 12 months old.

The 92 million-strong nation’s most prestigious engineering school, the Sharif University of Technology, was also hit by airstrikes that damaged some of its most advanced faculties.

“The High-Performance Computing faculty and the Information and Communication Technology Centre were destroyed. That means the thesis and research of hundreds of students, including some of the country’s brightest minds went up in smoke,” said an engineering professor in a Tehran university, who like others interviewed by Time requested not to be named out of fear of retribution.

Industrial targets were likewise heavily hit, with petrochemical plants in the world’s largest gas field, the South Pars Gas Field at Asalouyeh, taking the brunt.

“Mobin and Damavand utility plants, which provided the necessary water, electricity and oxygen for Asalouyeh’s petrochemical plants were struck,” the semi-official Tasnim News Agency reported, adding that there will not be any electricity for the region’s multiple petrochemical plants until the utility plants are repaired.

Local media also reported that the Marvdasht industrial estate near Shiraz was also targeted, with the electricity utility plant of the Marvdasht Petrochemical Plant being hit according to a communique issued by the Marvdasht governorate.