US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, said on Friday that Washington expects Iran to respond to its 15-point proposal to end the war, adding he believes the sides will hold talks this week.
“My definition of real negotiating would be right here, and we don’t live until we’re done. And we’ve offered that, we think there will be meetings this week. We’re certainly hopeful for it. The President wants a peace deal," Witkoff said at the FII Priority summit in Miami.
“We have a 15-point deal on the table that the Iranians have had for a bit of time. We expect an answer from them and it would solve it all," he stated.
The deal, Witkoff continued, “would solve the enrichment question, which is we can't have enrichment there today. It would solve the material question. They have close to 10,000 kilograms of enriched material stockpiled, which they have to give up. It would solve the stockpiling question and the oversight question. All of these are red lines for us, but we’re not looking to see the dissolution of the Iranian people."
Witkoff stressed that the US thinks the Iranians are “very good people. We want them to thrive and survive and the country to join the League of Nations and to be prosperous and do a lot of business. We just don't want the destabilizing forces that they've generated out there."
The New York Times reported earlier this week that the US had sent Iran a 15-point plan to end the war in the Middle East.
Officials who spoke to the newspaper on condition of anonymity said the plan addresses Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs.
The plan also discusses maritime routes, one of the officials said. Since the beginning of the war, Iran has effectively blocked most Western ships from safely passing through the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway in and out of the Persian Gulf, cutting the global supply of oil and natural gas, and sending prices soaring.
On Wednesday, reports indicated that Iran had rejected the US plan despite the heavy blows it has sustained in the war.
Trump last Saturday gave Iran an ultimatum of 48 hours to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face strikes on its power plants. He has since extended that ultimatum to allow for negotiations with Iran, most recently on Thursday, when he gave Iran ten additional days.
(Arutz Sheva-Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)