IRAN: Axios: Trump Rejects Iran Offer, Says Blockade Stays

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US President Donald Trump appeared to confirm, in an interview with The New York Post, that the US is engaged in indirect talks with Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. The Post reports that Trump claimed to have "put Ghalibaf on notice" for a series of strikes on Israel and Kuwait today. 

• The Post reports Trump, "on Monday put Iran and the speaker of the Islamic Republic’s parliament on notice after Tehran attacked Israel’s biggest oil refinery and told The Post his response is coming “shortly.”
• "Iran escalated its attack on infrastructure by striking a water and electrical plant in Kuwait, and an oil refinery was set ablaze in the northern Israeli city of Haifa after the Iranian missile attack. Asked for his response on the strike, he told The Post: “You’ll see shortly" adding, “We’re gonna find out. I’ll let you know that in about a week.”
• While Trump declined to detail any potential response, earlier today, Trump repeated threats to strike Iran's electricity and water infrastructure if the Strait of Hormuz wasn't immediately “Open for Business.” The timeline Trump outlined in the Post (about a week) appears to conform to last week's decision to postpone strikes for 10 days.
• On the Iranian regime, Trump said, “There has been total regime change because the regimes of the past are gone and we’re dealing with a whole new set of people. And thus far, they’ve been much more reasonable.”
• CNN reports that Ghalibaf said on Sunday on the prospect of talks with the US, “The enemy publicly sends messages of negotiation while secretly planning a ground invasion...”

German seasonally-adjusted CPI data from Bundesbank released this afternoon after earlier Destatis data shows core momentum moderating further, to its lowest pace since June 2021, as lower services outweighed slightly higher core goods this time. On a sequential M/M comparison, all of core / services / core goods saw firmer prints this time than in February but remained unconcerningly low.

• Core inflation momentum (defined here as 3m/3m seasonally-adjusted annualized rate) fell to 1.9% in March from 2.1% in February.
• It was the lowest since June 2021 and second lowest since December 2020, indicating that absent fresh pressures, the post-Covid inflation cycle would have arguably concluded by now in Germany.
  • Sequentially, core ticked up 0.25% M/M (3.0% annualized), even though a little higher than the ECB target individually this represents an unremarkable print well within recent ranges. The question here will be if higher energy prices will be able to provide renewed upside to core pressures in the months ahead.
• Services inflation momentum fell to 2.8% in March, the lowest since August 2025 following February's 3.2%.
  • Sequentially, services inflation was 0.25% M/M after 0.17% in February but again within recent ranges.
• Core goods momentum meanwhile remained low at 1.0%, above February's 0.7% but still well below the ECB's 2% goal. Core goods may be where any wider price pressures from higher energy will show up first, on the back of both higher materials and also higher logistics costs driven by pump prices.
  • Sequentially, core goods saw a 0.17% M/M print in March, up from 0.08% in February and 2.0% in annualized terms.