Iran offers seven day Hormuz reopening as regional war widens ahead of UN summit

Iran has offered to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days if the United States takes initial steps to ease military pressure, an unnamed Iranian official told Japanese broadcaster Kyodo News on Tuesday, as world leaders converged on New York for the UN General Assembly against a backdrop of expanding conflict across the Middle East.

The official said the proposal had already been passed to Washington through mediators and called for renewed talks aimed at a permanent end to hostilities between the two countries. He ruled out a meeting between Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the assembly this week, but said movement toward an agreement remained possible if Washington demonstrated what he called seriousness and commitment. The claim could not be independently verified.

Pezeshkian left for New York on Tuesday morning, saying his delegation would forcefully present Iran’s positions at the assembly, according to Iranian state media. He said Iran would use the platform to describe what he called the oppressed state of the Iranian nation and the distrust created by broken past agreements, adding that Tehran had returned to the negotiating table multiple times only to see agreements disregarded. He said people cannot be forced into submission through force.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who arrived in New York a day earlier after a stop in Doha for talks with Qatari officials, said trust in the United Nations itself had been lost, pointing to the assembly’s own theme this year of restoring trust as evidence that confidence in the body had eroded. He accused unnamed powerful states of acting with impunity while ignoring international law, saying Western nations that present themselves as defenders of human rights had stayed silent over actions by Israel.

Foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei separately accused Washington of trying to shift blame onto Iran for rising global fuel prices, saying the public would not forget who started what he called a war of aggression and whose actions triggered the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz and the disruption of commercial shipping. He compared the American position to Adolf Hitler’s framing of the invasion of Poland as a defensive act.

The diplomatic exchanges came as fighting intensified sharply inside Yemen. Military sources from both the Houthi movement and Saudi backed government forces told a wire agency that clashes over the past two days had killed 154 people combined, with Houthi sources reporting 118 dead from Saudi airstrikes, artillery fire and ground clashes in Taiz, Al Jawf, Marib and Saada provinces, and government sources reporting 36 dead among their own ranks. A Houthi affiliated news agency separately said Saudi airstrikes on the Red Sea port city of Mokha killed at least six civilians, including two children and a woman, and wounded eight others.

Group of Seven foreign ministers, representing Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain and the United States, issued a joint statement Tuesday calling on Iran to end its arming and support of the Houthis, warning that the escalating attacks threaten international trade and global stability. The ministers also called on the Houthis to immediately halt all military action and attacks on civilian shipping and return to the political process, alleging Tehran remains in violation of past UN Security Council resolutions.

Saudi Arabia’s Civil Defence agency issued and then lifted an emergency alert for the southern Najran province on Tuesday without specifying the nature of the threat, following similar alerts issued Saturday for Riyadh, Al Kharj and the southern Farasan islands amid what the Houthis have described as a maritime blockade on Saudi shipping in the Red Sea.

Washington has floated committing 5 billion dollars to a new multinational fund aimed at repairing Gulf energy facilities damaged during the war and helping regional states develop export routes that bypass the Strait of Hormuz, according to a report citing US and Middle Eastern officials. The plan, described as seeking a matching 5 billion dollar contribution from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Iraq and Jordan, would be run through the US Development Finance Corporation. Some regional officials described the initiative as an attempt to downplay the strategic importance of the strait and present a united front against Iran, while cautioning that funding reconstruction before a peace deal risks Iran striking the same facilities again. A Gulf security researcher warned the arrangement could leave some participants economically dependent on others and strain bilateral ties.

France said it is drafting a new UN Security Council resolution aimed at guaranteeing freedom of navigation through Hormuz, after Russia and China vetoed a similar Bahrain led draft in April. French Foreign Minister Jean Noel Barrot also met his Indian and Pakistani counterparts in New York, proposing that India work jointly with France on securing the strait and welcoming Pakistan’s mediation efforts between Iran and the United States.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said the bloc’s Aspides naval mission protecting Red Sea shipping needs more than ten warships, roughly double the six currently deployed, calling the security situation more serious than when the mission launched in 2024. Italy has said it will not wait for a broader EU response and is preparing its own separate naval deployment to the region.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said he had agreed to a Saudi request for limited defensive air to air refuelling support, deploying one Voyager aircraft in the coming days, after Riyadh sought help keeping shipping routes open amid the intensifying Houthi campaign. France’s Emmanuel Macron, meeting Trump in New York, said the two leaders discussed reopening Hormuz, protecting Red Sea oil routes without further escalation, and continued support for Ukraine, adding that both sides shared a desire to free up shipping volumes through the strait.

Separately, an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps spokesman said a test of a new Iranian weapon against a US aircraft carrier had gone well, warning that additional weapons would be deployed if fresh aggression occurred, a claim that could not be independently confirmed. China’s foreign ministry said Tuesday it opposed what it called illegal US sanctions threatened against Iranian airlines, after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday that all Iranian carriers would be grounded worldwide within days under the weight of American penalties.

With diplomats from dozens of countries now gathered in New York and fighting continuing on multiple fronts from Yemen’s coastline to the Strait of Hormuz, the coming days of the General Assembly are likely to test whether the flurry of competing proposals, from Iran’s ceasefire offer to the Gulf reconstruction fund and France’s Security Council push, produce any concrete movement toward de escalation or simply mark another round of statements layered atop an unresolved war.