Iran delivered a written three-phase ceasefire text to Washington through Pakistan on Monday 27 April, Axios first reported1. Phase 1 freezes hostilities and binds guarantees against further attacks on Iran and Lebanon. Phase 2 rewrites the legal framework over the Strait of Hormuz and demands Iranian compensation. Phase 3, nuclear, is explicitly deferred.
White House spokesperson Olivia Wales restated the inverse US position the same day: enrichment suspended for at least a decade and Iran's 60% uranium stockpile handed over before talks proceed2. "The United States will never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon," Wales told Axios. Pakistan Army chief Asim Munir had walked Tehran's first three-to-five-year enrichment offer to Islamabad on 16 April; the monitoring duration moved two years between then and now, yet the architecture did not.
Iran asks Washington to start with hostilities; Washington asks Iran to start with uranium. Phase 3 cannot be split from Phase 1 without one side conceding the order, and neither has. The third channel attempt in two weeks collapsed when Trump cancelled the Witkoff and Kushner Islamabad flight; the Pakistani route is what survived. The Iranian text has now been delivered in writing; the US position remains rhetorical. OFAC and the White House have authorised no signed Iran instrument in 59 days.
