Iran's New Security Chief Says Tehran Has Sent Trump Its Price for Ending the War Through Qatar: Stop Fighting on All Fronts, Unfreeze the Money and Lift the Naval Blockade. 'Trump's Threats Will Not Achieve Any Results.' The Foreign Ministry Contradicted Him Within Hours.

Iran says it has handed the United States a formal list of conditions for ending the seven-month-old war, delivered through mediators in Qatar and Pakistan, and is now waiting on President Trump to answer. Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, laid out the terms in an interview with Al Jazeera on Saturday. "Our conditions are an end to the war on all fronts, the release of our frozen funds and an end to the naval blockade," he said.

The three demands are narrower than what Tehran was asking for earlier in the conflict. Iranian officials had previously insisted on reparations for the strikes that opened the war in late February, when the United States and Israel launched a campaign that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. That demand is gone from the new list. David Des Roches, a former Pentagon official who follows Gulf security, told Al Jazeera that Washington would likely still view the package as a demand for "surrender," but said dropping reparations suggested real diplomatic movement.

Rezaei, who took over the council about a month ago, coupled the offer with a warning. "It is in Washington's interest to accept these conditions. Trump's threats will not achieve any results," he said, adding that Iran remains prepared for what he called a "decisive war" if the fighting continues. He said Iran had recently tested an anti-ship missile near a U.S. aircraft carrier, denied any Iranian role in the escalating fighting between Yemen's Houthis and Saudi Arabia, and said Tehran was discussing arrangements for the Strait of Hormuz with Oman.

The timing follows a week in which Trump told Axios he has "a big decision coming up. Do I want to go in and annihilate them or do I not?" Within hours of that interview, Iran struck a second tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, Saudi Aramco told European customers they would receive no crude in October, and Russia and China vetoed a U.N. resolution to extend sanctions monitors. Iran's message through the mediators appears designed to land before Trump makes that decision.

Not everyone in Tehran is reading from the same script. A Foreign Ministry spokesperson contradicted Rezaei on Saturday, denying that any mediation would take place during Pakistan's interior minister's upcoming visit to Tehran and saying the trip would focus only on bilateral relations. The split points to a familiar fault line in Iranian decision-making between the security establishment, which Rezaei now speaks for, and the diplomats who would have to negotiate any actual text.

The channel Rezaei described is the one that produced the last agreement. A U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding brokered earlier this year expired in August without being renewed, and Qatar and Pakistan have been trying since then to restart contact. The U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports and the freeze on Iranian funds abroad are the two levers Washington has used to press Tehran economically while the shooting continues, and both appear on Iran's list because both are things only the United States can lift.

Rezaei's phrase "on all fronts" is the hardest of the three for Washington. It would cover not only U.S. operations against Iran but Israeli strikes and, by implication, the Gulf and Yemeni theaters where Iranian-aligned forces are fighting. The White House had not responded to the Iranian terms as of Saturday evening. Trump has said in recent days that the wider war is "hopefully" near its end, and U.S. diplomats sat down with Houthi representatives in Muscat last weekend. Whether the Iranian list becomes the basis for talks or a footnote to a new round of strikes now rests, as Rezaei put it, with Trump.