Iran rejects 45-day ceasefire proposal as Trump’s deadline nears

Iran on Monday rejected a 45-day ceasefire proposal and said it wants a permanent end to the war, even as Israel attacked a major gas field and U.S. President Donald Trump’s ultimatum to open the Strait of Hormuz loomed.

“We only accept an end of the war with guarantees that we won’t be attacked again,” Mojtaba Ferdousi Pour, head of Iran’s diplomatic mission in Cairo, told The Associated Press. He said Iran no longer trusts the Trump administration after the U.S. bombed the Islamic Republic twice during previous rounds of talks.

Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency said Tehran conveyed its response through Pakistan, a key mediator.

And yet a regional official involved in talks said efforts had not collapsed. “We are still talking to both sides,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss closed-door diplomacy.

Ferdousi Pour said Iranian and Omani officials were working on a mechanism for administrating the strait, through which a fifth of the world’s oil is shipped in peacetime. Iran’s grip on it has shaken the world economy. Tehran has refused to let U.S. and Israeli vessels through after they started the war on Feb. 28.

Israel strikes massive gas field, and Trump sets deadline

Iran’s rejection came after Israel struck a key petrochemical plant in the South Pars natural gas field and killed two paramilitary Revolutionary Guard commanders.

The gas field attack aimed at eliminating a major source of revenue for Iran, Israel said. The field, the world’s largest, is shared with Qatar. It is critical to electricity production, but the strike appeared to be separate from Trump’s threats.

An earlier Israeli attack on the field in March prompted Iran to target energy infrastructure in other Middle East countries, a major escalation.

Trump has warned Iran that the U.S. could set the country “back to the Stone Ages.”

Word of Iran’s rejection of the ceasefire proposal came while Trump addressed an Easter event on the White House lawn, and it was not clear whether he was aware. But he also was scheduled to hold a news conference later Monday.

“If they don’t cry uncle, no bridges, no power plants, no anything,” Trump said of Iran. “But they will.”

He also threatened to go further. “If I had my choice, what would I like to do? Take the oil,” he said, suggesting it could be done easily, but “unfortunately the American people would like to see us come home.”

Asked if Tuesday at 8 p.m. Washington time was his final deadline for Iran, Trump replied simply, “Yeah.”

Proposal had called for a 45-day ceasefire

Egyptian, Pakistani, and Turkish mediators had sent Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff a proposal calling for a 45-day ceasefire and the strait’s reopening, two Mideast officials told the AP. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private negotiations.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei earlier told journalists that “negotiations are entirely incompatible with ultimatums, crimes, and threats of war crimes.”

Former Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayatir urged Arab countries to discourage Trump from striking power plants, warning the entire region would go “dark” if that happens.

Brent crude oil, the international standard, rose to $109 in early Monday spot trading, about 50% higher than when the war started, then wavered. U.S. stocks mostly held steady.

Israel threatens to “hunt” Iranian officials

Explosions boomed in Tehran, and low-flying jets could be heard for hours.

The head of intelligence for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, Maj. Gen. Majid Khademi, was killed, according to Iranian state media and Israel’s defense minister. Israel said it also killed the leader of the Revolutionary Guard’s undercover unit in its expeditionary Quds Force, Asghar Bakeri.

“We will continue to hunt them down one by one,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said of top officials.

Israel’s military later said it struck three Tehran airports overnight—Bahram, Mehrabad and Azmayesh—hitting dozens of helicopters and aircraft it said belonged to the Iranian Air Force.

A Tehran resident said “constantly there is the sound of bombs, air defenses, drones,” speaking on condition of anonymity for her safety. Another resident said he takes sleeping pills to get through nightly bombardments, and said people worry about power, gas and water cuts. “Stop this war,” he said.

Separately, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia activated air defenses to intercept Iranian missiles and drones. Tehran has kept up pressure on Gulf neighbors, including strikes against infrastructure like oil fields.

In Israel, Iranian missiles hit the northern city of Haifa, where four people from one family were found dead in the rubble of a residential building.

Airstrikes kill more than 25 across Iran

Smoke rose near Tehran’s Azadi Square after an airstrike hit the grounds of the Sharif University of Technology. Multiple countries have sanctioned the university for its work with the military, particularly on Iran’s ballistic missile program.

Iranian media reported damage to buildings and a nearby natural gas distribution site. The university is empty as the war forced schools into online classes.

A strike near Eslamshar, southwest of Tehran, killed at least 15 people, authorities said. Five were killed in a residential area in Qom, and six were killed in strikes on other cities, the state-run Iran daily newspaper reported. Three people were killed at a home in Tehran, state television reported.

In Lebanon, where Israel has launched air attacks and a ground invasion that it says target the Iran-linked Hezbollah militia, an airstrike hit an apartment in Ain Saadeh, a predominantly Christian town east of Beirut. It killed an official in the Lebanese Forces, a Christian political party strongly opposed to Hezbollah, his wife, and another woman.

“We had always felt safe here,” family friend Nadine Naameh said.

More than 1,900 people have been killed in Iran since the war began, but the government has not updated the toll for days.

More than 1,400 people have been killed in Lebanon, and more than 1 million people have been displaced. Eleven Israeli soldiers have died there.

In Gulf Arab states and the occupied West Bank, more than two dozen people have died, while 23 have been reported dead in Israel and 13 U.S. service members have been killed.

—By Jon Gambrell, Samy Magdy, Bassem Mroue, and Will Weissert, Associated Press

Munir Ahmed, Isabel DeBre, Amir-Hussein Radjy, and Michelle L. Price contributed to this story.