THE ceasefire between Iran and the United States and Israel was hanging by a thread today.

Pakistan, the main mediator between the two sides, rejected allegations that it has been sheltering Iranian military aircraft from possible US and Israeli attacks.

Far-right US President Donald Trump said on Monday that the month-old truce between the warring sides was on “massive life support” as he dismissed Iran’s latest peace proposal as “a piece of garbage” that he did not even bother to finish reading.

The same day, CBS News reported that two unnamed US officials had accused Iran of moving a number of military aircraft to the Pakistani air force base Nur Khan near Rawalpindi after the April 8 ceasefire to protect them from potential US air strikes.

In a statement, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry dismissed the report as “misleading,” adding that the aircraft had arrived as part of diplomatic logistics linked to talks in Islamabad between Iranian and US officials on April 11.

The statement pointed out that aircraft from both Iran and the US used the base, adding that any suggestion of other reasons was “misleading and entirely detached from factual context.”

Hours after the CBS report, CNN reported that some in the Trump administration believed Pakistan to be guilty of sharing “a more positive version of the Iranian position with the US than what reflects reality.”

Sources in the US administration also say there are doubts as to whether Islamabad is “aggressively conveying Trump’s displeasure.”

Whatever the rhetoric, the ceasefire, though fragile, remains in place, though so do the core disagreements separating the two sides.

One is Washington’s insistence that Iran explicitly abandon its nuclear programme and surrender its stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 per cent, near weapons-grade levels.

Tehran insists that talks on its nuclear programme can only take place following the lifting of sanctions and the end of the blockade of its ports imposed by the US on April 13.

During an interview on CBS on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he believed the conflict with Iran was not yet resolved.

If Iran’s nuclear material could not be removed through negotiations, he said, Israel and the US believed the issue would need to be resolved militarily.

Israel is known to possess nuclear weapons, though the country neither acknowledges nor denies this, and is not a party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.