Analysis by CNN's Mustafa Salem
Seven months after the United States and Israel launched war on Iran, the Iranian president took the stage in New York to tell US President Donald Trump that the Islamic Republic "will not yield."
At a time when his country is facing the most dangerous existential war, and amid Trump’s threats of “genocide” and increasing economic pressures at home, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian assured world leaders gathered at the United Nations General Assembly that Iran will not compromise on its nuclear program, its missile defenses, or its control over the Strait of Hormuz. This vital waterway through which once flowed a fifth of the world's oil.
“We cannot allow some to freely access and pursue their interests through a waterway, while they use this same corridor to impose their aggression on us, destabilize our security, and prevent us from accessing our waterways,” Pezeshkian said.
The Iranian president used the international platform to convey Tehran's demands and its basic message to Trump, who sought through war to defeat the Islamic Republic. Trump had bragged that the United States had “destroyed” nuclear sites in Iran, and also claimed that it controlled the Strait of Hormuz.
From the same platform, Trump said on Tuesday that he was considering the option of "annihilating the Islamic Republic" and throwing it "into hell." Pezeshkian indicated that this speech prompted him to rephrase the speech he had prepared before traveling to New York. His speech in response received almost unanimous praise in the Iranian media, including newspapers and platforms affiliated with the hard-line movement.
Pezeshkian's speech was among the most anticipated at this year's UN meeting, and its delivery on American soil represented a rare historical moment: a foreign leader speaking at length in a hostile country still at war with his own.
Despite early assessments from Washington that the fighting would be short, the US-Israel war on Iran instead continued, turning a military operation that began with the assassination of the Islamic Republic's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, into months of regional instability and one of the most notable foreign policy legacies of the Trump presidency.
One of Pezeshkian's key messages provided a glimpse into how the Islamic Republic will seek to define its regional position in the post-war period. He told Iran's neighbors that its future security must be guaranteed, otherwise the entire region would be forced to "live in insecurity together."
The message carried an implicit threat, according to one expert.
Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the Chatham House think tank in London, told CNN: “Iran has been presenting regional security as indivisible, indicating that continued pressure and conflict will impose huge costs on the entire region.”
But the message also indicates that Iran realizes that it will need to find a way to coexist with the rest of the region, according to another expert, Hamid Reza Azizi, senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group.
“This reflects an understanding that Iran will eventually need to reach arrangements that ensure peaceful coexistence with its neighbors,” Azizi said.
A new diplomatic framework
Pezeshkian delivered his speech at the United Nations a day after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi held at least two hours of talks in New York with Trump peace envoy Steve Witkoff, the first sign of a resumption of diplomacy between the two countries since the signing of a faltering deal more than three months ago.
Following Pezeshkian's statements, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that those talks did not result in any major breakthrough, indicating that the memorandum of understanding concluded earlier this year was no longer on the table.
A plan drawn up in June did not lead to further negotiations between Iran and the United States. Instead, the conflict has escalated, leaving the region mired in further uncertainty about how the war will end.
At home, Pezeshkian and Iranian officials who engaged in a diplomatic track with Washington faced criticism from rival extremist factions, which consider any agreement with Trump as a surrender.
Ibrahim Rezaei, a hard-line parliamentarian, asked on Wednesday, after Araghchi’s meeting with Witkoff: “On what authority did the Foreign Minister hold his meeting with the representative of the aggressor enemy?”
Pezeshkian also faced criticism from hard-liners over his participation in the meeting in New York.
“His critics have expressed concern that if...he signals to the outside world any intention to make concessions, it will be interpreted as a sign of weakness and desperation, and therefore counterproductive for Iran as it seeks to end the war on its own terms,” said Azizi of the International Crisis Group.
While Pezeshkian and Araqchi were presenting Iran's demands to the world and sending a message of coexistence to the region, security officials at home announced a tougher stance on Iran's negotiating methods.
The Islamic Republic will adopt a new framework when negotiating with the United States, requiring Washington to take the first step, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Mohsen Rezaei, told state media in an interview broadcast around the same time as Pezeshkian's speech.
“Under this new framework, the era of rhetoric and negotiations for the sake of negotiations is over,” Rezaei said in the interview. “Any future talks, or reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, will be conditional on Washington’s full implementation of Iran’s requirements as a precondition.”
His statements may not have been directed only at Washington, but were also intended to reassure hardliners suspicious of Iranian officials conducting negotiations in New York.
However, at a time when Iran was conducting diplomacy at the United Nations and hinting at the possibility of future coexistence with countries in the region, the Maritime Security Center in the Sultanate of Oman announced that a ship had been attacked near the Strait of Hormuz, resulting in the death of one person.
In this context, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) advised ships to exercise caution during transit.
