Live Updates: Iran’s military says war will only end when U.S. admits defeat as it asks American public to protest against Trump

The U.S. military announced on Wednesday that it has completed the withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq, ending a 12-year mission to fight the Islamic State group.

The withdrawal, agreed on two years ago, comes against the backdrop of the ongoing war between the United States and Iran that has also sometimes spilled over into Iraq, with Iran-backed militias firing on U.S. troops and the U.S. striking the groups’ strongholds.

The withdrawal was celebrated by Iran-backed groups but raised concerns among some other Iraqis, particularly in the Kurdish region.

“The expulsion of the occupation forces, defeated, from the land of Iraq is the beginning of full sovereignty,” Abu Mujahid al-Assaf, a security official with the powerful Kataib Hezbollah militia, said in a statement.

U.S. troops pulled out of bases in most areas of Iraq last year but maintained a small presence of hundreds of troops in the semiautonomous northern Kurdish region. Bases there have regularly come under attack since the U.S. and Israel launched their war against Iran on Feb. 28. Iran-backed Iraqi militias also have coordinated with Yemen’s Houthi rebels to attack Saudi Arabia.

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Iranian authorities said on Wednesday they received the formal U.S. response to their proposal to end the Middle East war, state media reported, days after President Trump publicly rejected the plan.

“At today’s cabinet meeting, the American side’s proposal was presented to President Masoud Pezeshkian by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi,” government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani told the official IRNA news agency.

Pakistan will use “whatever means are available” to defend Saudi Arabia against Iran-backed Houthi rebels, the country’s defense minister said Tuesday, offering one of Islamabad’s clearest indications yet that it could become directly involved in the widening regional conflict.

Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif declined to say whether Pakistani forces had already participated in airstrikes. He said, however, that Pakistan’s military capabilities would be available to Saudi Arabia under a new mutual defense pact with Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

“I’m not going into detail, but obviously when I say that we are bound by this arrangement to defend Saudi Arabia, that means whatever means are available at our disposal, they’ll be available to Saudi Arabia also. I think that’s a categoric statement,” Asif told reporters during a visit to Rome when asked whether Pakistan had been involved in airstrikes against Iranian operators in Yemen.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi received feedback from the U.S. on the proposed plan for a seven-day ceasefire, which would be aimed at building trust between the two sides, according to an official quoted by the Reuters news agency.

Iran proposed a seven-day plan for a ceasefire and the phased reopening of the Strait of Hormuz last week, contingent on the U.S. meeting conditions laid out in the mid-June memorandum of understanding that fell apart after several weeks. Mr. Trump has publicly rejected the Iranian proposal.

According to the Reuters report, the disagreement between the two sides is currently over the sequencing of the plan, and Araghchi will discuss it in Tehran on Wednesday.

President Trump is stuck when it comes to deciding between further war and negotiations, according to Maj. Gen. Mohsen Rezaei, the head of Iran’s influential Supreme National Security Council.

“We stated our conditions, but Trump is incapable of decision-making,” Rezaei said Tuesday during a meeting with Azerbaijan’s deputy prime minister, Shahin Mustafayev. “Trump is trapped in a quagmire where he can neither negotiate nor fight.”

Multiple Iranian officials have said they are waiting for a response on the proposal made during last week’s U.N. General Assembly, however, Mr. Trump already dismissed the plan on Saturday. 

“Our plan, which became known as the seven-point plan, was conveyed to the Americans through the Qatari intermediary,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told reporters in New York on Monday. “Despite the things that the American president and others said, I said that we are waiting for an official response from America through the intermediary.”

Rezaei singled out the strict sanctions on airlines that went into place last week, calling them an “air blockade,” as a sign of “desperation.”

The U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions Tuesday on 10 individuals and companies accused of helping Iran’s military logistics agency acquire weapons and electronics.

The targets include people based in Iran, Beijing, Hong Kong and Pakistan.

The sanctions are part of a Trump administration initiative called Operation Economic Outcast, aimed at pressuring Iran by isolating its government and economy.

“Treasury will not tolerate any support to the regime and will continue to identify, expose, and isolate Iran’s enablers,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.

Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps said that the only way for the war in Iran to end is for Washington to admit defeat and leave.

IRGC spokesperson Gen. Hossein Mohebbi delivered the message at a news conference Tuesday in Tehran, reading from what he called a “letter to the American people.” 

The message was apparently meant for the U.S. public just weeks ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections for the U.S. Senate and Congress – a vote in which Mr. Trump’s Republican Party faces fierce headwinds as it looks to maintain control of Congress.

Later, in remarks to The Associated Press, Mohebbi urged Americans to reconsider their leadership and take to the streets and protest the president’s policies to denounce what he called the U.S. government’s warmongering policies.

He accused the United States of using Iran’s nuclear program as a ruse to “plunder Iran’s wealth” and to turn the country “back into a colony.”