Esmaeil Baghaei, the spokesman of Iran's Foreign Ministry, told reporters on 3 May 2026 that Tehran had received and was reviewing a written response from Washington to Iran's 14-point ceasefire proposal, transmitted through Pakistan.1 It was the first time the United States had put a written document into the Islamabad channel since the war began on 28 February.
The Pakistan back-channel had been carrying Iranian paper for a week. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi transmitted Iran's fourth written ceasefire text via Islamabad on 1 May. Donald Trump had verbally rejected each of the previous three through Truth Social, most recently on 2 May. For Washington to engage on paper, even with a refusal, is a procedural step the channel had not produced across four rounds. The State Department can transmit a paper through a back-channel intermediary without it counting as a treaty action that would require Senate advice; the elasticity is part of why the route was chosen.
The content has not been made public. Neither government has released the text. Whether the document is a substantive counter-proposal or a relayed verbal rejection in document form is unclear from public reporting. Trump simultaneously described Iran's terms as "not acceptable" while calling talks "very positive". The verbal track and the written track are now running in opposite directions through the same Pakistani diplomats, on the same Sunday Project Freedom put 15,000 personnel into the same strait.
Markets read the diplomatic signal as the more credible of the two, taking Brent Crude down to $101.70 on 4 May from a $123 30 April high. The trade prices the Pakistan reply ahead of the kinetic threat; one IRGC round on a Project Freedom escort would reverse the $21.30 four-session move in a single session.
