Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said Monday the demands in the Trump administration’s 15-point peace plan are “excessive, unrealistic and unreasonable.” The comments directly contradicted Mr. Trump, who claimed last week that Iran had agreed to most of the points.

While no official version of the proposal has been made public by the White House, various versions circulating in Washington include demands that Iran hand over its highly enriched uranium, accept limits on its drone and ballistic missile programs end support for regional proxy groups and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Tehran’s rejection of the U.S. demands comes as Mr. Trump threatens severe consequences if Iran does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which has been effectively closed to U.S. ships since early March. Mr. Trump reiterated Monday via Truth Social that if “for any reason a deal is not shortly reached,” U.S. forces will destroy Iran’s power plants, oil wells, Kharg Island and desalination plants.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels entered the war on the side of their Iranian patrons over the weekend by launching a coordinated drone and missile attack on Israel. The Israel Defense Forces said it had intercepted all of the projectiles fired by the Houthis, although the development caused a new spike in global oil prices.

The Houthi attack raised concerns that the militants may attempt over the coming days to coordinate with Iran to block Red Sea shipping routes through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, a critical maritime choke point between Yemen and Djibouti. The Houthis said they are ready to intervene if other countries join the U.S. and Israel.

In a separate development Sunday, Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar continued to push Islamabad as the key mediator of indirect talks between Iran and the United States. The Trump administration, meanwhile, is continuing to send U.S. ground troops to the Middle East. About 3,500 Marines and sailors with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit aboard the USS Tripoli arrived in the region over the weekend.

Japan is sending combat troops to the Philippines for the first time since the end of World War II. The troops will participate in this year’s Balikatan military drills, which run from April 20 through late May. The drills are the largest annual joint exercises between the Philippines and the United States.

Tokyo’s decision to participate comes amid mounting tensions with China over the pro-Taiwan stance of Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. Beijing announced Monday it is sanctioning a conservative Japanese lawmaker close to Ms. Takaichi, accusing the lawmaker of “colluding with” separatists in Taiwan.

Japan called the step unacceptable and regrettable and demanded that China retract the sanction immediately. “The one-sided action taken by China as if to intimidate those of different views than its own is absolutely unacceptable,” Japan’s Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Masanao Ozaki said. “It is extremely regrettable from the perspective of the Japan-China relations.”

Noted American intellectual Francis Fukuyama took to social media recently to endorse an article titled “North Korea was right about nuclear weapons.” Moon Chung-in, a high-profile South Korean academic, meanwhile, wrote that it’s “no wonder the U.S. treads more carefully with the North.”

However, North Korea does not dominate any strategic maritime choke point the way Iran does with the Strait of Hormuz. That being said, the northeast Asian manufacturing powerhouses Japan and South Korea — both of which are close U.S. security allies and key nodes in global supply chains — lie within range of Pyongyang’s missiles.

But there’s a reason that would be disastrous for the North Koreans. “They can hit South Korea and Japan and U.S. bases all over,” says Bruce Bechtol, a North Korea watcher at Angelo State University in Texas. “The issue for them would be, they can get those things off, but we would go after them with a vengeance, and there would be no doubt that the end state would be a unified Korea.”

Operation Epic Fury is being judged daily on its wins and losses, writes Rick Berman, president of RBB Strategies. He asserts that “the risk is that we are losing focus on the end goals, which were informed by overwhelming support to rein in the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism.

“From 2012 to 2020, Iran sent more than $16 billion to terrorist proxies to be available and armed for the battle,” Mr. Berman writes in an op-ed for The Washington Times. “Iranians and their proxies have killed more than 1,000 American service members and civilians. You could set your watch in anticipation of Hamas’ next attack (Hamas has initiated war with Israel five times since 2007).

“The hidden threats to the success of Epic Fury are short-attention-span voters and summer warriors in Congress,” he writes. “When only a few weeks of combat is considered ‘endless war,’ the Trump challenge is media and congressional impatience.”

• March 31 — Global Fallout: The Iran War, from Hormuz to the Indo-Pacific, Stimson Center

• March 31 — Holding Enablers Accountable: The Islamic Republic of Iran’s Role in Russia’s Drone War, Atlantic Council

• March 31 — U.S. Navy Fighting Instructions with the Chief of Naval Operations, Center for Strategic & International Studies 

• April 1 — Regional Shockwaves: Long-Term Implications of the U.S.-Israel-Iran War, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

• April 1 — How is the U.S.-Israel War on Iran Impacting Energy and the Global Economy? Chatham House

• April 7 — U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on the Future of Trade Policy, Hudson Institute