US President Donald Trump said on Saturday he had secured a guarantee from Iran that it would not develop nuclear weapons, even as reports emerged that he had sent a “tougher” proposal back to Tehran that could prolong efforts to formally end the Middle East war, Ada Derana reported, citing AFP and wire services.
“The one guarantee that I have to have is that there will be no nuclear weapons. They’ve agreed to that, and it was very interesting,” Trump told his daughter-in-law Lara Trump in an interview broadcast on her Fox News programme on Saturday night. The New York Times and Axios reported separately that Trump had sent back a new framework with stiffer terms, though the specific revisions were not disclosed.
The intervention came a day after Trump convened the White House Situation Room to make a “final determination” on the outline reached on Thursday, and after Tehran publicly rejected several of his Hormuz conditions. Trump struck a less urgent tone in the Fox interview: “I’m in no hurry. Slowly but surely we’re getting, I think, what we want and if we don’t get what we want, we’re going to end in a different way.”
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, speaking at a defence summit in Asia, said Washington was “more than capable” of restarting the war if necessary. Iran’s IRGC claimed its forces shot down a US military drone that was “about to enter Iranian territorial waters,” state broadcaster IRIB reported. The US has not confirmed the incident. Earlier in the week, US forces struck the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas and were met with Iranian retaliatory fire — the worst fighting since the April ceasefire.
Iran continues to push back on Trump’s Hormuz framing. Iran’s ISNA news agency cited lawmaker Alireza Salimi as saying a plan “to implement Iran’s management and sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz” would soon be approved by parliament. Fars news agency said earlier there was no clause on toll-free transit “in the text of the agreement,” contradicting Trump’s social-media claims. Tehran also continues to require US$12 billion in frozen assets be released before substantive nuclear talks, Iranian media reported.
Israel widened its Lebanon offensive over the weekend. The Israeli military said a “significant number” of its forces had advanced past the Litani river and were carrying out expanded operations against Hezbollah in the Beaufort Ridge and Wadi al-Saluki area, a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said troops had pushed more than 30 kilometres into the country. Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam accused Israel of “a scorched-earth policy and collective punishment” and called for “a swift and real ceasefire.”
For Sri Lanka, which imports virtually all of its crude oil through Hormuz and saw its first 2026 current-account deficit on the back of the West Asia conflict, a tougher US proposal raises the risk that insurance-premium and freight-cost relief takes longer to reach the import bill.
Sources: Donald Trump says Iran has agreed to no nuclear weapons — Ada Derana.
