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Seven years after Donald Trump quit the nuclear deal, his duel with Ali Khamenei looks lopsided: the US president spoke from New York with renewed leverage, while Iran’s leader replied in taped defiance that evinced more strain than authority.
Khamenei’s televised speech on Tuesday captured both his persistence and his weakness.
Shortly before, Trump told a packed United Nations that Iran's "so-called" Supreme Leader had spurned a US offer of full cooperation in exchange for suspending its enrichment of uranium.
The rasping 86-year-old leader repeated that uranium enrichment is Iran’s sovereign right and dismissed negotiations with Washington as futile, but the context was unmistakable: nuclear sites had been struck, senior commanders lost and the economy reeled after a 12-day Israeli-American war in June.
The timing made clear that the speech was taped hours earlier before Trump had even spoken, and Khamenei’s delivery relied on hand-scribbled notes.
What was presented as a rebuttal was in fact a prepared monologue, more an appeal to a weary population than a real-time answer to Washington.
Turning point: Soleimani
The confrontation has followed a familiar rhythm.
In September 2018 Trump told the UN the US had quit the “horrible” nuclear deal, restored sanctions and denounced Tehran as the “world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.” Days later, Khamenei addressed crowds in Azadi Stadium, boasting of an unbroken axis from Yemen to Gaza.
The following year, protests over fuel hikes revealed cracks at home, and on January 3, 2020, an American drone strike killed Qassem Soleimani, Khamenei’s most trusted lieutenant and the architect of Iran’s proxy network.
By September 2020 Trump was still boasting of Soleimani’s death and tightening sanctions, while Khamenei deflected with reminders of Iran’s endurance during the Iran-Iraq War embargo.
Fractured command
Fast forward to September 2025: Trump once again denounced Iran from the UN podium. Hours later Iranians heard Khamenei’s taped message—defiant, but less an assertion of command than an effort to buy time for a regime battered by war, inflation, and looming snapback sanctions.
Between June 12 and 24, 2025, Israel launched a sweeping air campaign against Iran, killing nuclear scientists along with hundreds of civilians and military personnel. Iran retaliated with volleys of drones and missiles. But the upshot was unmistakable.
Khamenei vanished from public view for nearly three weeks and has appeared only sparingly since. His speech on Tuesday sounded less like triumph than a plea for stamina from a population strained by sanctions and conflict.
In late August 2025, the E3 (Britain, France, Germany) triggered it, citing Iran’s growing stockpile and obstruction of inspections. On September 19, the Security Council failed to adopt a draft to offer relief, meaning all UN sanctions are set to return on September 28.
On borrowed time?
Khamenei spoke against this backdrop of dwindling external support and exposed vulnerabilities. Hopes of Russian and Chinese protection have proven illusory, and Israel’s strikes stripped away the proxy shield that once kept Iran at arm’s length from direct confrontation.
The Islamic Republic—the “system” in Iran’s official parlance—now leans on survival tactics: smuggling networks, repression and symbolic defiance, reminiscent of Saddam in the 1990s.
Tehran seeks to wring advantage from global distractions, from the US-China rivalry to Europeans’ recognition of Palestine. Yet harsh realities persist: a broken economy, an alienated populace and the specter of renewed confrontation.
After the June war, thousands more were arrested—including many from Iran’s Jewish community — on suspicion of collaboration with Israel. At least nine people have been hanged on such charges since October 7, 2023, according to the Oslo-based Iran Human Rights Organization.
Khamenei’s defiant message hardly offered a way out. It functioned more as reassurance to his circle and propaganda for the base—another effort to buy time.
The veteran theocrat's latest message served more as reassurance to his circle and propaganda for the base than as a real strategy. It showed him boxed into a mentality that time can be bought through attrition.
The reckoning ahead will decide whether his persistent defiance can prolong the ruling system, or whether sanctions, airstrikes and popular anger will force concessions that no rhetoric can forestall.
A clash over Iran’s nuclear path has intensified in Tehran, with hardliners demanding weaponization while others warn such moves invite disaster just three days before the automatic return of UN sanctions.
The debate was sharpened by near-simultaneous interventions from Donald Trump, Ali Khamenei and President Masoud Pezeshkian all within 24 hours.
In his Tehran speech, delivered as Pezeshkian landed in New York, Khamenei ruled out any rapprochement with the United States “for at least another 30 years” and dismissed the idea of building nuclear weapons, declaring them forbidden “for the time being and in the future.”
Khamenei’s words were an apparent blow to more than 70 hardline lawmakers who had called for Tehran to start producing bombs.
Moderates seized on his stance to attack the MPs.
Political activist Ghorban Ali Salavatian posted their photos on X: “They got a swift response to their call for bombs. I hope they understand they were wrong—though it’s unlikely they do.”
Reformist Mohammad Sohafi listed all 71 names, warning: “Let us keep in mind, in case of a new attack by Israel on Iran, that these MPs have invited the attack.”
Critics stressed that hardliners seem oblivious to how talk of leaving the Non-Proliferation Treaty or pursuing nuclear weapons effectively invites military strikes. Many still recall the cleric who, near the end of Hassan Rouhani’s presidency, confused the NPT with “MP3.”
But if moderates thought the hardliners’ embarrassment gave them an opening, they were soon reminded that Khamenei had no intention of granting their wish for US diplomacy.
Pezeshkian’s UNGA address ultimately disappointed both camps, reflecting the passivity and indecision that have come to define his administration. No one expected a breakthrough. The leader had already set the tone.
On social media, many mocked moderates for their naïve optimism about Pezeshkian meeting Trump.
“You cannot just shout to the US president that Pezeshkian is in town and wants to talk,” one user wrote. “Such a meeting takes months of preparation.”
Critics also reminded both Khamenei and Pezeshkian—who slammed Israel and the United States for attacking Iran while negotiations were ongoing—that Iran had offered no concrete proposals then, and still has none today.
Officials often dismiss Western calls for talks as “political,” while outlets like the Khamenei-linked Kayhan insist the West and the IAEA seek only concessions.
What they ignore is that negotiations are about trading concessions to reach compromise—a word treated in the Islamic Republic’s rhetoric as worse than a curse.
Just before Pezeshkian’s trip to New York Moderates, a group of centrist politicians gathered at the home of former Tehran mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi, discussing the possibility of the president getting leader’s approval to meet his American counterpart.
Nearly all backed the idea, according to media reports, except Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri, a former parliament speaker and once Inspector General of the office of the supreme leader.
“Change is absolutely impossible,” Nateq was reported as saying.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said during his meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday, "the views of both sides were exchanged and a solution ensuring Europe’s concerns and safeguarding Iran’s interests was clearly set out."
“If there is adherence to fairness and respect for the rights and interests of both sides, a definitive solution is within reach. We also agreed on resolving the issue of prisoners on both sides,” he added in a post on X.
US Senator Tom Cotton said on Wednesday that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s assertion during his speech at the UNGA that Tehran has never sought and will never seek to build a nuclear bomb was “a lie.”
“President Trump and our military struck a major blow against Iran’s nuclear program back in June. We can never allow this regime to obtain a nuclear weapon,” Cotton wrote on X.
US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff said on Wednesday that Iran is in a tough position but that Washington is carrying on a dialogue with its Mideast nemesis as new sanctions loom.
"With regard to Iran, we're talking to them. And why wouldn't we? We talk to everybody, as well we should. That's the job. Our job is to solve things diplomatically," Witkoff told the Concordia conference in New York on Wednesday.
"I would say with Iran that they're in a tough position. Now, snapbacks are going to ensue in what, two days or three days, something like that. And I think that we have no desire to hurt them," he added, referring to so-called "snapback" sanctions triggered by European states due for Sept. 28.
"I think we have a desire, however, to either realize a permanent solution and negotiate around snapbacks, and if we can't, then snapbacks will be what they are. They're the right medicine for what's happening."
