• Deadline arrives as Iran sends new peace proposal.
• War has roiled markets, raised prices, angering consumers.
• Unpopular conflict continues six months before US elections.

US President Donald Trump’s administration argued that a ceasefire with Tehran had “terminated” hostilities as a legal deadline arrived on Friday for coming to Congress about the two-month Iran war.

Under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, the president can wage military action for only 60 days before ending it, asking Congress for authorisation or seeking a 30-day extension due to “unavoidable military necessity regarding the safety of United States Armed Forces” while withdrawing forces.

The war began on February 28, when Israel and the US began airstrikes on Iran. On Friday, the Iranian state news agency IRNA said Tehran had sent its latest proposal for negotiations with the US to Pakistani mediators.

Trump formally notified Congress of the conflict 48 hours after the first airstrikes, starting the 60-day clock that ends May 1.

As that date approached, congressional aides and analysts said they expected the Republican president to sidestep the deadline. A senior Trump administration official said on Thursday the administration’s view was that the war powers law deadline did not apply.

“For War Powers Resolution purposes, the hostilities that began on Saturday, February ​28, have terminated,” said the official, requesting anonymity while describing the administration’s thinking.

No way out: Democrat Senator

Congressional Democrats, who have tried repeatedly to pass war powers legislation that would force Trump to end the war or come to Congress for authorisation, dismissed that characterisation, saying there was nothing in the 1973 law allowing for a ceasefire.

They also said the continuing deployment of US ships blockading Iranian oil exports was evidence of continuing hostility, not a ceasefire.

“After sixty days of conflict, President Trump still does not have a strategy or way out for this poorly planned war,” Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement calling the deadline “a clear legal threshold” for Trump to act.

Party loyalty as elections loom

Trump’s fellow Republicans, who hold slim majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives and rarely break from Trump, have voted almost unanimously to block every resolution seeking to end the conflict.

The Iran war has killed thousands, caused billions of dollars in damage and roiled world markets, disrupting energy shipments and boosting a wide range of consumer prices.

Polls show the war is unpopular among Americans, six months before the November elections that will determine who controls Congress next year.

Trump’s approval rating sank to the lowest level of his current term this week, as Americans blamed the war for higher prices.

The US Constitution says only Congress, not the ⁠president, can ​declare war, but that restriction does not apply to ​short-term operations or to counter an immediate threat.

On Thursday, Trump received a briefing on plans for fresh military strikes to compel Iran to negotiate an end to the conflict.

If fighting resumes, Trump can tell lawmakers he has started a new 60-day clock. Presidents from both parties have repeatedly done so when waging intermittent hostilities since Congress passed the War Powers Act in response to the Vietnam War.

That conflict, widely unpopular with Americans, was also not authorised by Congress.

Iran delivered a new proposal for peace talks with the US via mediator Pakistan, state media reported on Friday, with negotiations between the two sides frozen despite a weeks-long ceasefire.

The text of the proposal was handed to Islamabad on Thursday evening, the IRNA news agency reported.

The war, launched by the United States and Israel with a vast wave of surprise strikes on February 28 has been on hold since April 8, but only one failed round of direct talks has taken place between Iranian and US representatives.

In the meantime, Iran has maintained its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off vast amounts of oil, gas and fertiliser from the world economy, while the United States has imposed a counterblockade on Iranian ports.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that US President Donald Trump had told security officials to prepare for the blockade to last months, causing oil prices to spike.

Despite the failure to negotiate an end to the war, the ceasefire has held. On Friday, judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, a senior figure and well-respected cleric, said “the Islamic Republic has never shied away from negotiations”.

But in yet another sign that finding a compromise may prove difficult, Ejei said “we certainly do not accept imposition”, in a video shared by the judiciary’s Mizan Online website.

Tehran, though, does not want a return to war, he said.

“We do not welcome war in any way; we do not want war, we do not want its continuation.”

The lack of fighting has not assuaged markets, with oil prices still more than 50% above their prewar levels as traders confront a prolonged closure of Hormuz, while the European Central Bank held interest rates amid fears of soaring inflation.

War powers debate

Washington, meanwhile, was gripped by a legalistic debate over whether Trump had passed a deadline for requesting congressional approval for his war with Iran.

Administration officials, including defence secretary Pete Hegseth, insisted that the ceasefire meant that the clock was paused on a 60-day deadline requiring the president to seek war powers authorisation from Congress.

“For War Powers Resolution purposes, the hostilities that began on Saturday, February 28 have terminated,” a senior administration official told AFP late on Thursday.

Trump is under increasing domestic pressure over the war, with no clear victory in sight, inflation spiking due to the conflict and midterm elections due in November.

On Thursday, US government data showed slower than expected growth and inflation hit 3.5%.

In Iran, meanwhile, the economic consequences of the war, which come on top of years of fierce international sanctions, were beginning to bite.

On Thursday, the US military said its blockade had stopped Iran from exporting $6 billion worth of oil, while inflation, already above 45% before the war, reached 53.7% in recent weeks, according to the national statistics centre.

“For many people, paying rent and even buying food has become difficult, and some have nothing left at all,” 28-year-old Mahyar told an AFP reporter based outside Iran, saying the company he worked for had laid off 34 people – nearly 40% of its staff.

Hormuz missions

Trump has repeatedly lashed out at Washington’s international allies for failing to join efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

France and Britain have led efforts to bring together an international coalition of dozens of countries that would help reopen the strait, but only once peace is secured.

But on Thursday, a US official confirmed to AFP that Washington was launching its own international coalition to restart shipping, dubbed “the Maritime Freedom Construct”.

That prompted French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot to insist that the two missions would complement and not compete with each other.

The US mission is “not of the same nature as the one we established… it comes as a sort of complement”, Barrot said on a visit to the Gulf.