Tehran is 'serious' about peace talks and US response is 'difficult to accept,' Iran's foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei says after Trump rejects 14-point proposal as 'totally unacceptable'

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei used his Monday, May 11, 2026 weekly press briefing in Tehran to argue that the Islamic Republic remains serious about a peace process with the United States, telling reporters that the demands set out in the 14-point proposal Iran transmitted to Washington via Pakistani mediators are "legitimate rights, not concessions," and that the US — which President Donald Trump used Sunday afternoon to reject Iran's response as "totally unacceptable" in two Truth Social posts — has repeatedly demonstrated it is "not serious" about a diplomatic process. The briefing came less than 24 hours after Iran's formal response to Washington's latest proposal was transmitted via the Pakistani mediator on Sunday, May 10, and the day after US Central Command (CENTCOM) said its forces had "struck and disabled" two Iranian-flagged oil tankers near the Gulf of Oman to enforce the American naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

Baghaei's message, as carried by Moneycontrol off the AFP wire on Monday afternoon Indian time, was structured around a single rhetorical move: Tehran's position has not changed, and the impasse is Washington's problem. "Our positions are clear," he has said in successive weekly press briefings; "the other side constantly changes its demands." The line is the Iranian government's standing response to the Trump administration's public framing of Tehran as obstructive — and Newsorga's reading of the Monday briefing is that Baghaei judged he could make it again, twelve hours after Trump's Truth Social rejection, without yielding any ground.

What Iran wants — and is calling 'legitimate rights'

The contents of Iran's 14-point peace proposal, transmitted to Washington through the office of the Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, were laid out on Sunday by the semi-official Tasnim news agency and translated by Xinhua. The proposal, Tasnim wrote, "highlights the need to immediately end the war, provide guarantees for the non-repetition of the aggression against Iran, and certain other issues within a political agreement." Specifically, Tehran is demanding:

(1) An immediate cessation of conflict on all fronts, with particular emphasis on Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq in addition to Iran itself.

(2) A binding guarantee against the repetition of "aggression" against Iran, framed in the proposal as a political commitment underwritten by the US and its regional allies.

(3) Lifting of the US naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which CENTCOM has been enforcing since the early-April ceasefire took hold.

(4) A 30-day window for the rescinding of US sanctions on Iranian oil sales, with the timeline running from the conclusion of the preliminary agreement.

(5) Full release of Iran's frozen assets held in US and allied banking jurisdictions.

(6) War reparations by the United States for the February 28-April 8 conflict.

(7) Recognition of full Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, the 21-mile waterway between Iran and the Musandam Peninsula that Tehran has, in effect, controlled since the war began.

Baghaei told reporters on Monday that Tehran considers all of these not concessions but legitimate rights: a framing that internalises Iran's reading of the war as one in which it was the target of unprovoked US-Israeli strikes on February 28, and which therefore views demands for reparations and a sanctions reversal as the natural outputs of any peace settlement, rather than as items requiring quid-pro-quo.

The US response: 'difficult to accept'

The United States had submitted its own competing proposal — a 14-point plan that, per the Times of India, asks for an end to Iran's uranium enrichment programme for at least 12 years in exchange for the gradual lifting of US sanctions. Baghaei has previously described that proposal as containing "excessive and unreasonable demands," with his message at the weekly briefing being that the US response is "difficult to accept" and "not easy to review." The line is one TeleSUR translated directly from a recent Baghaei briefing; the anews wire on May 5 reported him as additionally calling for the US to show "minimum good faith" if it is serious about diplomacy.

Baghaei's consistent thematic claim across the April and May briefings — sharpened Monday — is that threatening language and the naval blockade are not compatible with a serious diplomatic process. "Negotiation," he told an earlier briefing, "is neither argument, nor dictation, nor extortion, nor coercion." The deliberate echo of the Trump style is part of how Iranian state diplomacy is choosing to engage the Truth Social rebuttals: by treating them as evidence that Washington, and not Tehran, is the unserious party.

Trump's Sunday rejection

Trump posted his rejection on Sunday afternoon, May 10, in two Truth Social posts. "I have just read the response from Iran's so-called 'Representatives,'" he wrote. "I don't like it — TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!" In a second post, the US president accused Iran of "playing games with the United States, and the rest of the World," adding: "For 47 years the Iranians have been 'tapping' us along, keeping us waiting, … laughing at our now GREAT AGAIN Country. They will be laughing no longer!"

Trump did not specify which elements of Tehran's response he objected to. The Politico wire and the Associated Press report noted that Iranian state television had earlier reported that Tehran rejected the US proposal as amounting to surrender, insisting on the seven-point list described above — and that this characterisation was probably the trigger for the Truth Social posts, although a more granular item-by-item analysis of which exact paragraphs Trump found unacceptable has not been released by the White House.

President Masoud Pezeshkian, in a parallel Sunday statement carried by Iranian state media and reported by Fortune, took the opposing public stance: "We will never bow down to the enemy, and if there is talk of dialogue or negotiation, it does not mean surrender or retreat." The framing matches Baghaei's: that Iran's engagement with the Pakistani-mediated track is not concession-making, and that the US characterisation of the proposal as a failure of negotiation is precisely the kind of narrative-building Baghaei has been pushing back against for six weeks.

CENTCOM, the tankers and the credibility of 'minimum good faith'

The CENTCOM action that has most directly undermined Washington's case for minimum good faith, in Baghaei's framing, is the Friday, May 8 strike that the US military said "struck and disabled" two Iranian-flagged oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz to "stop them pulling into an Iranian port on the Gulf of Oman." In its press release, CENTCOM said: "US forces in the Middle East remain committed to full enforcement of the blockade of vessels entering or leaving Iran." The action was the most-recent in a sequence of US naval interdictions that has marked the ceasefire period since April 8, and the one that Baghaei is most-likely to have had in mind when describing the US posture as not serious about peace.

Iran's foreign minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi had earlier accused Washington of opting for a "reckless military adventure" every time a "diplomatic solution is on the table," in a post on X following the CENTCOM strikes. Baghaei's Monday briefing extended the line: that US military action during a ceasefire while US diplomatic action demands the cessation of Iranian hostilities is itself the evidence that the US posture is internally contradictory.

The mediator: Pakistan

The diplomatic vehicle for all of this is Pakistan. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif confirmed on X late Sunday that Tehran had conveyed a response to the US but did not give any details of its contents. Baghaei has, in successive briefings, publicly rejected claims that Egypt is also mediating — "Pakistan is the only mediator in these negotiations," he said in the April 20 briefing carried by WANA News Agency, "of course, other countries are offering good offices and making efforts in this regard, but as I mentioned, the current mediator is Pakistan."

He has also been explicit about what is not on the table: Iran's defensive capabilities, especially its missile programme. Asked at the April 20 briefing whether Iran might consider negotiating with the US over its missile capabilities as a potential concession, Baghaei replied: "How did such a question even come to mind? We have repeatedly stated that we do not engage in discussions regarding our defensive capabilities." The line has not changed in subsequent weeks: the 14-point proposal Tehran delivered on April 30 and refreshed on Sunday does not include any element relating to missile-programme constraint or nuclear-enrichment freeze, and Baghaei is making that exclusion a defining feature of how he is describing Iran's seriousness.

Where the next round happens — if it happens

Pakistan previously hosted a round of direct Iran-US delegation talks in Islamabad on April 11-12, days after the ceasefire took effect, which ended without an agreement. Baghaei has, at successive briefings, said no date has been set for a next round. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Friday, May 8 that the US expected Iran's proposal over the weekend, with the "hope" that "it's something that can put us into a serious process of negotiation" — language Trump's Sunday posts effectively retracted within 48 hours.

Whether Baghaei's Monday briefing functions as the Iranian government's closing of the diplomatic door for now, or as a holding statement in advance of the BRICS Foreign Ministers' Meeting India is hosting on May 14-15 in New Delhi — where Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi is expected to lead the Iranian delegation — is the question that diplomats in Tehran, Washington, Islamabad and New Delhi are watching most closely this week.

What it adds up to

Newsorga's reading: there is, at this point, no detectable substantive progress between the two 14-point proposals, and Baghaei's Monday line is best read as a defensive positioning ahead of next steps rather than as a signal of movement. The structure of the Iranian demand set — war reparations, Hormuz sovereignty, frozen-asset release and a 30-day sanctions-rescission window — and the structure of the US demand set — a 12-year enrichment freeze in exchange for gradual sanctions relief — are not yet within a brokerable range of each other. The most that can be said with confidence is the Baghaei line itself: that Tehran is publicly framing itself as serious about peace, is treating its proposal as a floor rather than an opening bid, and is locating the burden of seriousness on Washington.

What changes that, if anything, is the next 72 hours: whether the BRICS meeting in Delhi produces a Chair's statement on West Asia that Iran can use, whether CENTCOM repeats the Friday tanker action this week, whether Trump retreats from the "totally unacceptable" framing of Sunday, and whether Pakistan's Shehbaz Sharif can persuade either side to put a date on a third round of Islamabad talks. Baghaei's Monday message was, in effect, that none of those questions can be answered with Tehran as the obstacle — which is what serious about peace talks means in the Iranian official framing this week.