U.S. and Iran trade threats to end ceasefire as Trump insults latest proposal

Ajouté : 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]We're going to begin in the Middle East.

[00:00:01]The speaker of Iran's parliament says Thrron's military is ready to quote teach a lesson to any aggressor. Now, yesterday, President Trump said the ceasefire is on life support and called Iran's proposal to end the war quote garbage.

[00:00:15]>> Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and they won't have a nuclear weapon. And they didn't want to go that far. If you can believe it, they didn't. How stupid.

[00:00:24]Are they stupid people? They didn't want to believe it. They think that well, I'll get tired of this. I'll get bored or I'll have some pressure, but there's no pressure. There's no pressure at all.

[00:00:34]>> CBS News chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordis joins us now. Um, so Nancy, you hopped on the phone with the president yesterday. What was his tone?

[00:00:42]What did he tell you?

[00:00:45]>> Uh, Kelly, he was extremely unhappy with the latest peace proposal from Iran that he got over the weekend. He described it as a bad proposal, badly written, badly delivered. He said that they weren't willing to make enough concessions when it comes to their nuclear program and so he rejected it outright and so the state of negotiations uh is is very fragile right now. He went on to say uh that the the ceasefire is on life support and with gas prices now 50% higher than they were before the war. He told me that he is all in favor of suspending the federal gas tax, which is that 18 cent per gallon tax that uh we've all been paying. It has not changed since 1993.

[00:01:33]It goes to uh fund the highway trust fund to repair roads, construct roads.

[00:01:39]Um and he is in support of pausing it for the first time ever. Former President Joe Biden proposed something similar. The last time gas prices were this high back in 2022. Uh but at that time, Republicans were opposed, although it appears that that is changing this time.

[00:01:57]>> So, uh would a gas tax expansion, um Nancy, does the president feel that Congress would pass it? I mean, I get uh that sense that there this is sort of bipartisan support when it comes to this.

[00:02:10]>> Yeah. Well, it was really interesting, Vlad. Within hours of the president making it clear that he was in favor of suspending the gas tax, you had multiple House and Senate Republicans racing to introduce legislation that would pause the gas tax for uh 3 months with another option to extend it for an extra 3 months. So definitely there are Republicans who are on board and they say a vote could come as early as next week. But the politics are a little scrambled on this issue. You have other Republicans uh who say, "Look, the highway trust fund doesn't have enough money as it is. It's going to run out of funds in 2028. Why would we want to to do this and and play around with something as important as uh as road repairs, road construction, something that every driver relies on? Uh the best way they argue to bring gas prices down in a meaningful way because, you know, after all, 18 cents is is kind of a drop in the bucket when gas prices uh have increased by more than a dollar since the war started. But also uh they say that this could be kind of a band-aid, a panacea when the real goal here is to get the straight of Hormuz reopened so that oil prices and therefore gas prices can come down more precipitously.

[00:03:27]>> Yeah, I think that's a really good point. It's it's not going to get it down under $3 a gallon, but perhaps does send a message to voters, you know, hey, we we hear your pain ahead of the midterm elections. I do want to switch gears uh to China. The president, of course, is heading there to meet with his counterpart, Xiinping. I mean, this has been a long time coming since back when you and I were talking about the tariffs and the trade war. What what leverage does the president have here, if anything?

[00:03:53]>> Well, uh, China is highly interested in these negotiations because it is the largest purchaser of Iranian oil and so, uh, their gas prices have taken a hit in China as well. And so, President Trump will be looking for any help he can get from President Xi to put pressure on Iran to make bigger concessions on its nuclear program in order to get this uh get this peace deal across the finish line and try to get the straight reopened. But we know that President Trump beyond talking about Iran really wants to focus on trade, wants to focus on AI, on uh on partnerships with China, even potentially uh bringing some Chinese businesses to the US to invest over here. Um and we know that President Xi is going to be rolling out the red carpet for President Trump uh knowing that that is something that the president really likes when he is traveling overseas.

[00:04:50]>> All right, Nancy, really appreciate it.

[00:04:53]You got it.

[00:04:54]>> All right. For more on the situation with Iran, we're joined by CBS News Middle East contributor Courtney Keley, who's in Washington for us this morning.

[00:05:01]So, Courtney, does China have the ability to apply pressure on Iran and make a deal with the US?

[00:05:06]>> Well, China has already kind of involved itself diplomatically. We saw just six days ago that the Iranian foreign minister went to Beijing, met with his counterpart who's not only uh the foreign minister but is also part of the Communist Party pilot bureau. Was on the table was US Iran negotiations among other things. Iran really uh does work with China not only on oil supplies but on trade as well.

[00:05:34]>> And you know we were talking about this this ceasefire stalemate, right? that it's um it's it's not it's on life support, right? That's what he said.

[00:05:43]What do we know about the current state of negotiation and what the sticking points are between the US and Iran?

[00:05:49]>> I would say it's on life support. I would say that there's no recognition on either side that they're ready to give in on anything because what Iran wants is they want sovereignty over the street of Hormuz. They want lifting of sanctions and they also want reparations for this war straight out of the gate.

[00:06:05]If they don't get that, they're not ready to talk. And that's not something the US is ready to talk about. So it's really two sides on on you know on either side not speaking and saying the same thing over and over again which is the US wants this nuclear program deactivated so to speak the highlyenriched uranium uh taken out of the country um blended down and Iran won't talk until they start the conversation with sanctions.

[00:06:37]So, uh, what is Iran? I mean, part of what we were told by the Secretary of Defense and the president is in the early days of this war, the United States had obliterated Iran's missile defense capabilities. They destroyed their navy. Is Iran ready to fight if these talks collapse? I mean, and if so, how would they fight?

[00:07:00]It's really important to note that both the US president um and the Israeli prime minister in separate interviews said including 60 Minutes said that they're willing to speak to go back to war if necessary. And this Iranian regime that's now in place is hardened.

[00:07:18]It's the Iranian revolutionary guard and they go back to the Iran Iraq war which was a long bloody war that they were all part of including the new supreme leader Mojabah Hamei who's taken his father's place. He went to war at 17 and he has all the relationships with the Iranian revolutionary guard that are calling the shots now instead of the clerics. So you have trained operatives both inside and outside of the country. uh you've got proxy militias, not only uh Hezbollah and Hamas and the Houthis, but now you have a complete destabilization happening in Iraq with the Iraqi Shia militias supporting Iran and also launching attacks from there. So for instance, a couple of years ago, it would have been safe for someone like me or you uh Vlad or Kelly to go into Baghdad with the right security details.

[00:08:10]Right now I'm speaking to people there and they say it's a no-go. Not just because there's kidnapping, but also because of the instability. So, it's another country destabilizing because of this. So, it's much bigger map and there's a lot of problems coming up and there's still that potential for conflict.

[00:08:27]>> All right, Courtney Keely breaking it down for us. Cy.