Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Friday that Tehran's military strength enabled it to confidently seek peace in the region, a day before talks with arch-foe the United States were due to resume.
“With the army behind us, we can express our positions on peace, stability, and regional cooperation from a position of strength,” Pezeshkian said during a ceremony marking Army Day.
He added that the armed forces have helped position Iran as a regional power and said the country now produces its own military equipment. “We build what we need on land, in the air, and at sea,” he said.
Pezeshkian praised the army’s role in responding to national crises and described it as a reliable force alongside the government and people.
The Iranian army, reliant on conscription, is equipped mainly with older generation weapons, many produced during the Soviet Union.
His comments came days after the first round of talks between Iranian and US officials in Oman. Following the talks, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei told military commanders that Iran’s armed forces must maintain maximum readiness to counter external threats. He described the military as the country’s shield and accused foreign powers of trying to weaken public trust in it.
President Donald Trump has threatened strikes if Iran fails to come to an agreement with the United States to curtail or dismantle its nuclear program.
“Armies that lack conviction, courage, and trust in their cause have collapsed, no matter how heavily equipped they were,” Khamenei said.
Khamenei also called for upgrades in weapons, logistics, and personnel support, alongside a continued focus on ideological commitment. Senior military officials echoed the message, saying Iran’s armed forces remain fully prepared and supported by the public.
The plan was presented by Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi in writing to US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff during the three-hour talks.
Tehran proposed that in the first stage, it would temporarily reduce its uranium enrichment level to 3.67% in exchange for access to financial assets frozen by the United States and permission to export its oil, the diplomatic sources told Iran International.
In the second phase, the sources added, Iran would permanently end high-level enrichment and restore the United Nations nuclear watchdog's inspections if the United States lifts further sanctions on Iran and persuades Britain, Germany and France to refrain from triggering the so-called snapback of UN sanctions on Tehran.
In this phase, Iran would also commit to implementing the Additional Protocol, a supplementary agreement that allows the UN nuclear watchdog to carry out surprise inspections at sites not declared to the agency.
Tehran ended that compliance in February 2021 after Trump in his first term withdrew from a previous international deal over Iran's nuclear program in 2018.
The third and final stage calls for the US congress to approve the nuclear agreement and for Washington to lift both primary and secondary sanctions, while Iran would transfer its highly enriched uranium stockpiles to a third country.
Iran denies seeking a nuclear weapon and the US intelligence assesses that Tehran has not yet resolved to build one, but the Trump administration has warned Iran it must come to a nuclear deal or face attack.
A second round due to be held in Rome on Saturday could prove more rocky than the amicable first round in which Iran submitted its plan for a deal.
Washington toughened its public stance on Tuesday, with both the White House and Witkoff saying that the US goal in negotiations would be the wholesale end of Iran's nuclear program, a notion Iran has repeatedly called a non-starter.
Iran's proposal welcomed by Witkoff
US envoy Witkoff welcomed the proposals presented by the Iranian side, the sources told Iran International, surprising the Iranian delegation in Muscat.
Iranian officialdom appeared cheered by the first round of talks, with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei remarking in a meeting with senior military commanders on Tuesday that "the initial steps have been implemented well".
A diplomatic source outside Tehran expressed skepticism to Iran International of the Islamic Republic's intentions in the talks and said it seeks to delay a foreign attack by staggering an agreement over several complex phases.
“One of the reasons Iran’s Supreme Leader agreed to allow the resumption of negotiations is the need to buy more time, because he knows Iran currently lacks the ability to defend itself against another airstrike," the source said.
“Iran is mainly stalling to buy time to rebuild its air defense capabilities, which were all destroyed by Israel in late October, and to restore its capacity to produce surface-to-surface missiles which were damaged in that same Israeli attack,” the source added.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Thursday that his actions had previously thwarted Iran's ability to build a bomb, appearing to respond to a New York Times report that President Trump had halted Israeli plans to attack Iran.
"Netanyahu has led countless secret and open actions in the campaign against Iran's nuclear program that only thanks to them Iran does not have a nuclear arsenal today," the statement said.
Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said on Wednesday Iran was "not far" from possessing an atomic bomb.
"It's like a puzzle: they have the pieces and maybe one day they could put them back together. There's still a long way to go before we get there. But they're not far away, we have to admit that," he said in an interview with Le Monde.
"It's not enough to tell the international community 'we don't have nuclear weapons' for them to believe it. We have to be able to verify it," Grossi said.
In its latest report in March, the IAEA warned that over the past three months, Iran had significantly expanded its reserves of highly enriched uranium, and if this trend continues, its stockpile could theoretically be enough to produce six nuclear bombs.
Abouzar Rahmati, 42, a naturalized US citizen and resident of Great Falls, Virginia, admitted to conspiring to work with Iranian officials and intelligence operatives from at least December 2017 through June 2024. He faces up to 10 years in prison for acting as an agent of a foreign government and five years for conspiracy.
According to court documents, Rahmati offered his services to Tehran in 2017 and later traveled to Iran, where he met with intelligence officers and agreed to obtain information for them about the US solar energy sector. He also gained employment with a US company contracting for the FAA, where he downloaded at least 172 gigabytes of sensitive access-controlled data.
The files included documents related to the National Aerospace System (NAS), airport surveillance radar, and radio frequency data. The DOJ said Rahmati took the data to Iran and handed it over to Iranian officials in April 2022.
"Rahmati agreed to obtain information about the US solar energy industry and FAA data, and deliver it to Iranian officials," prosecutors said in a statement. He also used a cover story involving academic research to hide his contacts.
"This defendant knowingly acted on behalf of the Government of Iran and took steps to place sensitive information into its hands," said Assistant Attorney General Sue Bai, who leads the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
Rahmati’s sentencing is scheduled for August 26. The FBI and FAA's counterintelligence division were involved in the investigation.
"The Iranian government continues to target American institutions for infiltration," said US Attorney Edward Martin Jr. for the District of Columbia. "We will hold accountable anyone who puts our national security at risk."
Norman Roule, a veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency for over 30 years who once oversaw its Iran desk, said Tehran's veteran negotiators could drag out the talks to their advantage while enriching uranium toward levels needed to build a bomb.
“Every day talks drag on, Iran moves closer to the threshold,” he said. “And if it calculates that it gains more from staying on the edge of weaponization than actually building a bomb, it will continue to play this game.”
Tehran has proven adept, Roule said, at “negotiating the negotiation”, or what he described as using drawn-out diplomacy to defuse military threats and reduce sanctions while continuing nuclear development.
As the United States prepares to resume nuclear talks with Iran this weekend, Iran’s leadership would appear to be on the backfoot amid uncertainty over its political succession, economic malaise, regional setbacks and rising international suspicion of its nuclear ambitions.
Iran has historically used negotiations as a pressure valve, Roule said, entering talks only when the threat of military confrontation peaks, with previous talks in 2003, 2012, and 2015 coinciding with an escalated US military presence or regional turmoil.
But this time is different, he argued.
“This regime is weaker, more isolated, and increasingly unpopular. If Iran keeps using its nuclear program as a shield to avoid pressure on its oppression, terrorism, and hostage-taking, the international community must call its bluff.”
According to Roule, the Trump administration is entering the talks with a clear objective: a permanent end to Iran’s capacity to build a nuclear weapon, without repeating the perceived flaws of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
“The 2015 agreement placed temporary and reversible limits on Iran’s nuclear program but gave Tehran permanent sanctions relief,” Roule said. “The result was that Iran used that economic relief to finance terrorism and militias across the region.”
Now, Washington may seek to allow Iran a more limited civilian nuclear capability while barring any path to weaponization and denying access to funds that could revitalize Iran’s destabilizing regional network.
Historic Strain
The talks with Trump are proceeding as Tehran is at is weakest strategic moment since emerging from the punishing Iran-Iraq War in 1988, Roule argued.
Politically, the sudden death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a 2024 helicopter crash removed the only viable successor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei who shared the veteran leader's ideological alignment and political credentials.
Presidential elections last year saw historically low turnout, signaling popular resignation, and the recent ouster of the Vice President and the Finance Minister pointed to factional infighting.
On the economic front, inflation and the proportion of Iranians living below the poverty line both stand at around 30% while blackouts routinely plunge residents and businesses into the dark.
“This is an economic catastrophe,” he said. “Iran's people are paying the price for decades of mismanagement and isolation.”
Militarily, an Oct. 26 Israeli attack likely knocked out much of Iran's air defenses, capping months of harsh Israeli blows on Tehran's allies Hamas and Hezbollah.
“The ring of fire Iran built around Israel is now broken,” Roule said. “The Quds Force remains, but it is bruised and scattered,” he added, referring to the elite paramilitary force that oversees Tehran's foreign operations.
Moment of reckoning
While Roule emphasized his support for a diplomatic solution, he acknowledged that Israel in particular is closely studying plans for a potential attack
“If Israel delivers a significant strike, it won’t eliminate Iran’s nuclear capability permanently,” he said, “but it could raise the costs so high that Tehran would hesitate to rebuild.”
Still, there was some possibility that Tehran could choose a fundamentally different posture toward the United States.
“This could be the moment the Supreme Leader chooses normalization over confrontation,” Roule said. “The Iranian people — brilliant, resilient — deserve a future that isn’t shaped by threats, militias and sanctions.”