The United States and Iran are exchanging threats as tensions between the two countries rise ahead of the end of a two-week ceasefire.
Published April 21, 2026
Parliament Speaker Mohammad Berger Ghalibaf said Iran was “ready to reveal new cards on the battlefield” after US President Donald Trump threatened Tehran with “problems like we have never seen before” if the two-week ceasefire expires on Wednesday without a deal.
The war of words comes as a second round of peace talks between the United States and Iran, scheduled to be held this week in Pakistan, remain stalled after the United States seized an Iranian-flagged ship near the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, infuriating Iranian authorities and causing a further spike in global oil prices.
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“There is no official confirmation whether Iran will participate in the talks in Islamabad,” Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi said in a report from Tehran.
“We know that Iran is trying to keep the diplomatic door a little bit open, and there are still possibilities,” he added.
In a nightly post on X, Ghalibaf expressed anger at Trump for “imposing a siege and violating the ceasefire.”
“We will not accept negotiations under the cover of blackmail. Over the past two weeks we have been preparing to reveal new cards on the battlefield,” he said.
According to Assadi, this is a “mixed message”: “Iran is saying it is willing to negotiate, but not under the conditions imposed by the United States.”
“Of course, even if negotiations happen, there will still be some complex impasses, so there will be no easy negotiations. Both sides have a long list of demands, including those regarding the Strait of Hormuz, sanctions, war reparations, ballistic missiles and Iran’s regional relations,” Assadi said.
Meanwhile, President Trump said he was confident Iran would negotiate, adding that otherwise Iran “would be in trouble.”
He told PBS News on Monday that if the ceasefire ends without an agreement, “a lot of bombs will start going off.”
“They’re going to negotiate, but if they don’t negotiate, we’re going to be faced with problems like we’ve never seen before,” Trump said in a phone call to the conservative radio program “The John Fredericks Show.”
“I hope they reach a fair deal and rebuild their country, but if that happens, we won’t have nuclear weapons,” Trump said. “We cannot allow that to happen. It could lead to the destruction of the world, and we are not going to allow that to happen.”
