Iran says it has received an official response from the United States to its latest offer to end the war

Iranian officials said Wednesday they had received an official response from the United States to Tehran’s latest proposal to end the seven-month war, which U.S. President Donald Trump publicly rejected days earlier.

Officials did not say what the response contained or whether it was a rejection.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi presented the US response to President Masoud Pezeshkian at a Cabinet meeting, government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani told the official IRNA news agency.

“We will do everything possible to bring this agreement to fruition and will firmly defend the rights of the Iranian people,” Pezeshkian said. “The agreement must now be based on a win-win strategy.”

The Cabinet meeting follows Araghchi’s return to Iran after traveling to New York for the UN General Assembly last week, where officials held indirect talks with US officials and also met Qatari and Pakistani mediators on the sidelines of the annual gathering of world leaders.

Araghchi briefed the Cabinet on his trip to New York and the meetings he held there, including the conditions imposed by Iran for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which Mohajerani said were conveyed through mediators.

Araghchi said last week that he floated the proposal to reopen the strait within a week if the United States agreed to lift the blockade of Iranian ports, release frozen Iranian assets and lift sanctions on Iranian oil sales, among other conditions.

Trump quickly rejected the proposal, saying Iran wanted to make a deal because it was “losing so much” but that his offer “wouldn’t be acceptable.” Despite Trump’s public refusal, mediators continued to work with Iran and the United States to try to broker a deal to end the fighting and open the strait, according to officials who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday unveiled new sanctions targeting people and companies around the world that it accuses of facilitating or facilitating Iran’s military supply chain.

This latest action is part of the Trump administration’s “Operation Economic Pariah” campaign aimed at cutting off “critical financial lifelines” for the already heavily sanctioned Iranian government.

Ten individuals and entities based in Iran, Hong Kong and Pakistan now face sanctions after being accused of supplying weapons and weapons components to Iran’s Defense Ministry as it wages its seven-month war against the United States.

Iran’s economy continues to collapse

The Iranian economy, subject to strong tensions before the start of the war, has been in free fall since the start of the conflict at the end of February.

The country’s currency fell to a new record low on Tuesday, with traders in Tehran exchanging more than 2.5 million rials for the US dollar, a stark reflection of how war in the Middle East has gradually eroded Iran’s economy.

The latest decline came just 27 days after the rial hit its previous record low of 2.2 million per dollar on September 2. The currency has repeatedly reached new lows since the war began in February.

Trump said Tuesday that Iran is “failing very badly, very seriously” and again predicted the war would be “over very, very soon.”

At the start of the conflict, he predicted that the war would last only a few weeks. Most recently, Trump said he expected this to end only after the November 3 midterm elections in the United States.

Iranians face soaring drug prices due to US blockade and sanctions

Drug prices are soaring in Iran and some treatments have become hard to find, leaving patients and their families struggling as the U.S. blockade and tightening sanctions take a toll on the country’s pharmaceutical industry.

The price of some medicines has more than tripled, further straining Iranian finances, seven months after the start of the country’s war with the United States and Israel. Prices of food and other goods soared even as unemployment rose and the currency, which hit a record low this week, lost half its value.

The war became a test of economic endurance. Iran has attempted to drive up global energy prices by attacking the region’s oil transportation routes; the United States, in turn, seeks to destroy Iran’s economy by blocking its ports since June and imposing increasingly severe sanctions.

Iran executes 2 men accused of violence during January protests

Also on Wednesday, two men were executed in Iran for their role in violence during nationwide anti-government protests in January, state news agency IRNA reported.

Citing the country’s justice system, IRNA said the men took part in unrest in the northeastern city of Mashhad that left four security forces dead earlier this year. Their death sentences were upheld by Iran’s Supreme Court before being executed Wednesday morning.

The unrest began on December 28 amid anger over Iran’s collapsing currency and deteriorating economy and quickly spread across the country, with protesters increasingly calling for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. Iranian authorities responded with a deadly crackdown.

Rights groups say thousands have been killed and tens of thousands arrested, while Iranian authorities have reported a significantly lower death toll.