Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. AFP
"We possess the necessary will to end this conflict, provided that essential conditions are met, especially the guarantees required to prevent repetition of the aggression," Pezeshkian said in a phone conversation with Antonio Costa, the president of the European Council, according to a statement from his office, reiterating a key demand of Tehran's.
Costa said in a social media post after that call that “the current situation in the Middle East is extremely dangerous” and urged Iran to de-escalate.
“To de-escalate the situation, I urged Iran to stop the unacceptable attacks on countries in the region and to engage positively on the diplomatic track, notably with the UN to ensure the freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz,” he wrote on X.
Responding to a 15-point US plan for ending the war last week, Iran issued a five-point counterproposal that also called for ending the "aggression" and establishing a mechanism guaranteeing that neither Israel nor the United States would return to war, Iranian media reported.
"The solution to normalising the situation is the cessation of their aggressive attacks," Pezeshkian said on Tuesday.
Pezeshkian's comments come on the same day that US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth said that the next days of the Iran war will be "decisive" while refusing to rule out US ground forces playing a role in the conflict.
"The upcoming days will be decisive. Iran knows that, and there's almost nothing they can militarily do about it," Hegseth said.
The war began on 28 February when the US and Israel launched a wave of attacks on Iran, killing its supreme leader and touching off salvos of Iranian retaliatory missile and drone attacks on countries across the region
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