Trump says Iranian counter-proposal for ceasefire ‘significant, but not good enough,’ Tuesday deadline final

US President Donald Trump confirms having received a proposal from Iran for a ceasefire, calling it “significant,” while clarifying that it doesn’t go far enough.

“They’ve made a proposal… It’s not good enough, but it’s a very significant step,” Trump says while fielding questions from reporters during the White House Easter egg hunt.

Asked whether his Tuesday deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz will be his final one, given that he has already pushed it back two other times, Trump insists that he won’t be doing so again.

Trump says Iran has been “negotiating in good faith, that its new leaders are “not as radicalized” and that the war could “end very quickly.”

“We could leave right now, and it would take them 15 years to rebuild… but I want to finish it up,” he says, without explaining what “finish it up” means.

“Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. They are lunatics, and you can’t put nuclear weapons in the hands of a lunatic,” he says of Iran’s leaders, whom moments ago, he characterized as “much more reasonable.”

He claims that Israel would have been “wiped off the face of the earth” had he not pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2015, and says the current war is “about one thing: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.”