Iran has received proposals from mediators to halt its war with the US, foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said at a Tehran press conference on July 20.

The confirmation, in remarks carried by state news agencies, is the first official acknowledgement of a live mediation track since the June 17 memorandum of understanding between Tehran and Washington collapsed, and follows reports that Qatar has floated a 10-day ceasefire plan after Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi's condolence visit to Doha.

Overnight exchanges mark the ninth consecutive night of American strikes and the sharpest widening of the war's map since it began. US target lists now stretch from Tabriz and Urmia in Iran's northwest to the petrochemical ports of Khuzestan, well beyond the Hormuz theatre, while Iran's second strike in two days on a Kuwaiti power and desalination plant shows Tehran answering attacks on its infrastructure by going after the water and electricity lifelines of the Gulf states hosting US forces.

With mediator proposals acknowledged in Tehran but both militaries escalating nightly, each side is now degrading the civilian systems the other's population depends on, the pattern that historically precedes either a ceasefire or a general war.

"The fact that mediators are active and trying to prevent an escalation of tension is clear," Baghaei said. "The proposals put forward through mediators have been communicated to us and we have received them, but for now allow me not to go into their details."

He said the diplomatic apparatus was working "alongside and in step with the defenders of the homeland in the armed forces", and that Iran "will spare no effort to stop America's crimes".

Baghaei rejected suggestions that the collapsed memorandum had failed because of ambiguities in its text. "It is absolutely not correct. The text of the memorandum is a short text and has 14 clauses. Read the text; which clause of it is ambiguous?" he said.

He said clause five made clear that responsibility for managing the future of the Strait of Hormuz rested with Iran, in consultation with Oman and through dialogue with regional states. "The text is completely clear and there is no excuse for America's treachery. Nowhere have we seen the American side announce that it resumed attacks on Iran because of a mistake or a difference in interpreting the text."

He said Iran had honoured the deal until Washington breached it. "The logic was clear from the start: commitment for commitment. As long as the other side fulfilled its commitments, we were bound by ours. We have never been the first to break a pledge," he said. "An understanding or agreement has value and validity only as long as its parties abide by their commitments; otherwise it is nothing but writing on paper."

Baghaei dismissed what he called the false choice between talks and war. "Insisting on the binary of negotiation or war is not useful for our country," he said, adding that the work of Araghchi and of Majid, an apparent reference to Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force commander Majid Mousavi, served a single goal. "Negotiation and defence are both instruments; do not lose sight of the goal. The goal is protecting Iran's national interests, sometimes with the instrument of defence, sometimes with the instrument of diplomacy, and sometimes with both at once."

Iran's diplomats, he said, would not leave the field for fear of enemy deception, any more than missile crews would abandon their launchers because the other side had superior technology.

Opening the briefing, Baghaei condemned US strikes on civilian infrastructure in Iran's south, where bridges, an airport, power and desalination facilities have been hit in recent days. "Attacking civilian infrastructure, bridges, service and medical centres and what people rely on to carry on living is not merely an attack on a few points on a map; it is an attack on the right to life, security and human dignity," he said. "Iran is not a collection of remote islands where one part can be wounded while the rest is expected to stay calm. If Hormozgan is wounded, Mazandaran feels the pain; if Chabahar is targeted, the heart of Tehran races. Iran is one body, and every wound to any corner of it is a wound to this whole single body."

Asked about US President Donald Trump's claim that images from a strike on a school in Minab, in Hormozgan province, were generated by artificial intelligence, Baghaei said there was "no doubt that this savage act was deliberate and carried out by America, and they themselves know it well". He said Washington was highlighting Minab to imply that its other attacks over 40 days of fighting had been lawful, and that Iran would press on with documenting Minab, a strike at Lamerd and what he called hundreds of other crimes to hold the US accountable. American officials, he added, had previously dismissed the funeral of Iran's late supreme leader as a likely artificial intelligence product.

On the debate inside Iran over an "honourable peace", Baghaei said he knew of no war-mongers among Iranians. "Peace is not a luxury item placed on the shelf of international relations and presented to you. Peace is not handed to you on a tray. You must fight for peace," he said.

He listed what he called Washington's shifting justifications for the war: preventing an Iranian atomic bomb when it began on February 28, then eliminating a nuclear threat, then an imminent Iranian threat, then support for Israel, "and now because two or three ships were damaged in the Strait of Hormuz. All of these are pretexts."