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23-04-2026
TEHRAN/ WASHINGTON: Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has said Iran is “prepared to reveal new cards on the battlefield” after United States President Donald Trump threatened Tehran with “problems like they’ve never seen before” if the two-week ceasefire expires on Wednesday without a deal.
The war of words comes as the second round of US-Iran peace talks scheduled to take place this week in Pakistan remains in limbo after the US seized an Iranian-flagged vessel near the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, angering Iranian authorities and provoking another surge in global oil prices.
Reporting from Tehran, journalist Tohid Asadi said, “There is no official confirmation on whether Iran is going to take part in talks in Islamabad.”
“We know that Iran has tried to keep the door ajar to diplomacy, so there is still a possibility,” he added.
In an overnight post on social media, Ghalibaf expressed anger at Trump for “imposing a siege and violating the ceasefire”.
“We do not accept negotiations under the shadow of threats, and in the past two weeks, we have prepared to reveal new cards on the battlefield,” he said.
This was a “mixed message”, according to Asadi, “saying Iran is ready for negotiations but not under terms imposed by the US”.
“There will be no easy negotiations, if, of course, they even happen, as there are still several complicated sticking points. Both sides have a long list of demands, including relating to the Strait of Hormuz, sanctions, war reparations, ballistic missiles and Iran’s regional relations,” Asadi said.
Meanwhile, Trump said he was confident that Iran would negotiate, adding that the country would otherwise “see problems”.
He told media on Monday that if the ceasefire expires without a deal, then “lots of bombs start going off”.
“Well, they’re going to negotiate, and if they don’t, they’re going to see problems like they’ve never seen before,” Trump said in a phone call to the conservative radio program the John Fredericks Show.
“Hopefully, they’ll make a fair deal, and they’ll build their country back up, but when they do it, they will not have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said. “We can’t allow that to happen, that could be the destruction of the world, and we’re not going to let that happen.”
On the other side, oil prices have risen sharply following attacks on commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz and conflicting messages about the prospect of renewed negotiations between the United States and Iran.
Brent crude futures, the primary benchmark for global prices, jumped more than 7 percent in Asia on Monday as the outlook for peace between Washington and Tehran darkened.
Prices eased somewhat later in the morning, with the benchmark at $94.69 a barrel as of 02:05 GMT, up from just under $90.40 on Friday.
The latest price surge came after US President Donald Trump said US forces seized an Iranian-flagged cargo vessel that had attempted to evade the US blockade of Iran’s ports.
Trump’s announcement followed reports by the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) Centre over the weekend that two vessels came under attack while transiting the strait.
Iranian gunboats fired on a tanker, while an “unknown projectile” struck a container ship, according to the UKMTO.
After declaring the strait “completely open” on Friday, Tehran reversed course less than 24 hours later, citing the ongoing US blockade. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
