WASHINGTON — President Trump is sticking to his “red lines” on Iran’s nuclear program after Tehran offered to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for Trump setting aside the main cause of the war for further talks.

“The president’s red lines with respect to Iran have been made very, very clear, not just to the American public, but also to them as well,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at a briefing.

Trump met Monday with his national security team at the White House to discuss Iran’s two-phase proposal.

“The proposal was being discussed,” Leavitt said, without sharing additional detail on those deliberations.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a Fox News interview Monday that he views the idea with skepticism.

“What they mean by opening the straits is, ‘Yes, the straits are open, as long as you coordinate with Iran, get our permission, or we’ll blow you up and you pay us,’” Rubio said.

“That’s not opening the straits. Those are international waterways. They cannot normalize, nor can we tolerate them trying to normalize, a system in which the Iranians decide who gets to use an international waterway and how much you have to pay them to use it.”

A US official and other sources told Axios that Tehran is seeking to extend the ongoing cease-fire that began April 8 and to end the American naval blockade of Iranian ports, which started on April 13 after unsuccessful talks in Pakistan.

Iran claimed this month that it had reopened the critical chokepoint for oil and natural gas exports, but few tankers entered or left since that April 17 announcement, and Iran attacked several that tried.

“These are sensitive diplomatic discussions and the U.S. will not negotiate through the press,” White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said in a statement in response to the report.

“As the president has said, the United States holds the cards and will only make a deal that puts the American people first, never allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

Roughly one-quarter of the world’s seaborne oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz, and energy prices have surged globally since the start of the the US’s Operation Epic Fury against Iran on Feb. 28.

Just 21 ships exited the strait between April 24 and 26, according to the ship-tracking site Kpler. Two others entered during that time: a “ballast shadow oil/chemical tanker” Sunday, and “a sanctioned crude oil tanker” Friday.

Trump’s core war aim is ending Iran’s nuclear enrichment and retrieving an estimated 1,000 pounds of near-weapons-grade uranium.

He said Sunday that Iran is close to buckling under economic pressure from the US blockade.

“When you have, you know, lines of vast amounts of oil pouring through your system, if for any reason that line is closed because you can’t continue to put it into containers or ships, which has happened to them — they have no ships because of the blockade — what happens is that line explodes from within, both mechanically and in the earth,” Trump told Fox News’ “The Sunday Briefing.”

“It’s something that happens where it just explodes,” he added. “And they say they only have about three days left before that happens. And when it explodes, you can never, regardless, you can never rebuild it the way it was.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi flew to Pakistan on Friday for planned talks with US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner — but Trump told his diplomats not to go Saturday.

“Too much time wasted on traveling, too much work! Besides which, there is tremendous infighting and confusion within their ‘leadership,’” the president posted on his Truth Social.

“Nobody knows who is in charge, including them. Also, we have all the cards, they have none! If they want to talk, all they have to do is call!!!”

Araghchi headed on to a meeting with officials in Muscat in Oman — and then flew to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg on Monday.

The Iranian foreign minister reportedly mentioned to several mediating parties — including officials in Islamabad — that the remaining leadership in Tehran has not reached consensus about Trump’s demands to end the war, including the suspension of its uranium enrichment and its removal.

American bombers had struck three critical nuclear sites in Iran during the June 2025 Operation Midnight Hammer.But not all of Iran’s enriched uranium was destroyed at the time, according to Israeli officials, and the Trump administration expressed concerns at the start of the recent conflict about Tehran ramping up its nuclear enrichment again.