The messaging was unlikely to be accidental, as Friday prayer sermons are drafted by a central headquarters overseen directly by the office of Ali Khamenei and distributed nationwide to imams, often a day in advance.
In Mashhad, Ahmad Alamolhoda, Khamenei’s representative in the city, told worshippers that negotiations conducted “with weapons and warplanes hanging over the table” were part of “America’s political game,” dismissing the process as futile.
In Rasht, Rasoul Falahati said Iranian negotiators would not retreat “a single step.” In Karaj, Hossein Hamedani warned that “trusting the enemy is a strategic mistake,” while in Isfahan, Ahmad Mahmoudi said Iran’s adversaries were frustrated because “their hands have been cut off from Iran’s resources.”
None of the sermons struck an optimistic note.
Military officials reinforced the message, with army spokesman Mohammad Akraminia asserting that Iran had “easy access to US bases” in the region. If war broke out, he warned, “its scope will engulf the entire geography of the region.”
The same line was echoed by senior lawmaker Fada Hossein Maleki, who described the talks as part of Washington’s pressure campaign.
“We are not optimistic about these negotiations, given the previous history of talks and the recent US military deployment to the region,” he told the news website Didban Iran on Friday.
“When they bring their military to our region, they are placing a gun to Iran’s head and calling it negotiation,” he added, stressing that many members of parliament shared his pessimism.
A sharply different view came from Iran’s moderate camp.
Fayyaz Zahed, a former adviser to President Masoud Pezeshkian who resigned over what he described as mismanagement in the presidential office, predicted that Tehran would ultimately be forced to make sweeping concessions.
Speaking to Khabar Online hours before the Muscat talks began, Zahed said Iran would have to hand over its stockpile of enriched uranium and freeze enrichment for an extended period. “Anything else would make entering negotiations pointless,” he said.
Zahed, however, holds no official role in the negotiations, and his remarks stood in contrast to the line coming from clerical, military, and conservative political institutions that dominate decision-making in Tehran.
Maleki’s defiant tone underscored that divide, echoing the skepticism voiced from Iran’s pulpits and military platforms earlier in the week.
“Iran is not like Venezuela, which announces its readiness to negotiate the moment the US fleet approaches its shores,” Maleki said—suggesting that even as diplomats engaged across the table in Oman, the political establishment at home was preparing the public for talks that fail, or for confrontation that follows.
