On Sunday, May 3, 2026 — Day 65 of the U.S.-Iran war — Trump publicly rejected Iran's new 14-point peace proposal. The plan called for guarantees of nonaggression by both countries, sanctions relief, the lifting of the U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, and an end to the war 'on all fronts' — including the parallel Israeli-Hezbollah conflict in Lebanon. Trump's response: 'It's not acceptable to me. I've studied it, I've studied everything — it's not acceptable.' Trump separately said his representatives are having 'very positive discussions' with Iran, contradicting the public rejection.
The rejection landed alongside Trump's most explicit assertion yet that the war can continue without congressional authorization. In a letter to Congress over the weekend, Trump argued that the April 7 ceasefire reset the War Powers Resolution clock: 'There has been no exchange of fire between the United States Forces and Iran since April 7, 2026.' That framing reads the WPR's 60-day authorization-or-withdraw window as resetting whenever active fighting pauses — a reading not supported by the WPR's text, its legislative history, or any prior administration's interpretation. The 60-day clock was already nominally past in late April; the ceasefire-reset theory is the legal foundation for keeping U.S. forces deployed indefinitely without a vote.
The combined posture — reject substantive end-the-war terms, simultaneously claim unlimited authority to continue the war — sits at the center of the second-term war-powers crisis. Days earlier, Sen. Jack Reed told Hegseth in Senate testimony that Trump had 'no coherent strategy' when he 'unilaterally' decided to begin the war and that the U.S. is 'in a worse strategic position' than before. The 14-point proposal would have addressed the principal demands Trump publicly cited as war aims: an end to Iranian aggression, an open Strait of Hormuz, and a regional ceasefire. Trump's stated objection — 'I've studied everything' — included no specific point of disagreement with the proposal's terms.