Iran International executive editor
Whether real or not, President Donald Trump’s statement that Iran has reached out for talks is already having an impact: fueling mistrust within Tehran leadership while easing tensions in global oil markets, even as Iranian officials deny any such contact.
President Trump said on Monday that Iran had reached out to Washington for talks after the US threatened to strike Iranian energy infrastructure.
He said, “They called, I didn’t call. They want to make a deal, and we are very willing to make a deal.”
He also claimed that the United States had been speaking to “a top person” in Iran, though not to the new supreme leader, and added that “we don’t know whether he is living.”
At the same time, Trump said the threatened strike on Iran’s major power plants had been paused for five days. Oil prices fell after his remarks, while Iran’s foreign ministry denied that any such talks had taken place.
But the importance of Trump’s remarks is not only in the news itself. It is also in what the statement is designed to do.
Trump is trying to achieve two things at once.
First, he is using ambiguity as a political and psychological weapon inside the Islamic Republic. By saying he has been talking to a very senior Iranian figure without naming that person, he is planting doubt and suspicion among what remains of the leadership.
In current conditions, that matters. Iran’s leaders are living in hiding. Command centers are disrupted. Communications are limited out of fear of interception and assassination.
Meetings are difficult, if not impossible. In that setting, a statement like this will be deeply unsettling. Each senior figure will now be asking: Who is talking to Washington? Who is looking for an off-ramp? What is being hidden from the others?
By naming no one, Trump makes everyone in Tehran wonder who is talking to Washington.
This does not affect only the top. Lower-ranking officials also hear the same message. If they begin to believe that some of their leaders are quietly searching for a way out, they will become more uncertain, more demoralized, and more open to defection.
At the same time, hardliners will turn even more aggressively against figures they see as less rigid and begin looking for the supposed traitor within the system, especially after Trump suggested that even Mojtaba Khamenei is unaware of these contacts.
Some reports pointed to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf as the possible figure involved. Ghalibaf himself denied that and called the reports fake news aimed at influencing financial and oil markets.
But in an atmosphere like this, denial does not cancel out the effect. It creates new questions instead of closing them down. Some will ask: What if Ghalibaf is lying? Others will ask: what if someone else is involved?
The foreign ministry’s denial will have the same effect. In a system already shaped by fear and mistrust, public denials can deepen suspicion rather than contain it.
In a leadership living in hiding, ambiguity is not just rhetoric. It is a weapon.
Some hardline members of parliament, including Hamid Rasaei, have already gone public and started asking questions. That is exactly what Trump wants to achieve.
Second, Trump is also sending a message to the markets. By talking about a possible deal and pausing strikes on critical Iranian infrastructure, he signaled that the conflict will not move immediately into a more dangerous phase.
The effect was immediate: oil prices fell. This also gave Trump an off-ramp of his own. It allowed him to step back, for now, from a strike on Iran’s power plants while still claiming momentum and leverage.
So even if these contacts are real, limited, exaggerated, or deliberately ambiguous, the statement is already producing an outcome Trump wants: psychological pressure inside Tehran and calmer energy markets outside it.
That is the core point. This is not a normal diplomatic process. We do not know whether these talks are real, serious, or meaningful in any conventional sense. But that is no longer the only question. The statement itself is already doing political and economic work. It is widening mistrust inside the Islamic Republic and helping calm panic in global oil markets.
But there is a deeper question. Even if the reports are true, even if someone inside the system is involved in real contacts, can he actually deliver anything that matters? Will IRGC commanders listen? Will the men sitting behind the missile launchers take their cue from a political figure seeking an off-ramp? Or will they see whoever is talking to Washington not as a decision-maker, but as a traitor who deserves punishment or death?
That is the real uncertainty. The problem is not only whether there is a channel. It is whether anyone on the Iranian side still has the authority to make that channel meaningful.
Tehran’s unveiling of a towering statue depicting the Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling before pre-Islamic Persian King Shapur I has renewed criticism of the Islamic Republic’s appeal to nationalist sentiment following the June war with Israel.
For over forty years, the theocracy purged ancient Persian history from schoolbooks, replacing it with post-Islamic narratives. But after the 12-day conflict with Israel, officials have turned to the distant pre-Islamic past to rally a divided society.
From murals of ancient kings and soldiers to patriotic songs added to Shi’ite mourning ceremonies performed before Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Tehran now embraces imagery once deemed heretical by its own revolutionary ethos.
'Kneel before Iran' campaign
Tehran’s Revolution (Enghelab) Square was the scene of an unusual spectacle on Friday as officials unveiled a massive bronze statue depicting Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling in submission before Sassanid King Shapur I, commemorating Iran’s victory at the Battle of Edessa (260 AD).
The event was held under the slogan “Kneel before Iran,” part of what authorities describe as a campaign to project “national unity and historical pride” following the June war with Israel.
Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani, a staunch ultraconservative, said on X: “Enmity with Great Iran can only end in kneeling before this historic nation.”
Municipal official Davood Goodarzi said the installation would be accompanied by visual displays depicting “other victories of Iranians over foreign aggressors,” including the defeat of British forces by local commander Rais-Ali Delvari, Mirza Kuchak Khan’s resistance against Russian troops, and Surena’s triumph over Rome at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE.
The goal, Goodarzi said, is “strengthening concepts such as national dignity, social unity, and Iranian identity.”
The statue, he said, would remain temporarily at Revolution Square before being moved to a city gateway “where it will stand as the first emblem of Iran before diplomats and foreign visitors.”
Unveiled women were allowed to attend the unveiling ceremony—an uncommon scene at events organized by Tehran’s ultra-hardline municipality.
The turn to the pre-Islamic past
The sharp reversal also recalls remarks once made by Khamenei. In a 2011 speech, he asserted that “all the great military victories of this nation came after Islam,” dismissing pre-Islamic accounts as “things that are not documented.”
In 1987, he had said that prophets triumphed over kings such as Cyrus and that “nothing remains of these monarchs in history but names remembered with derision.”
Nevertheless, pro-government social media accounts have now gone so far as to circulate posters equating Khamenei himself with Shapur, showing him standing with a staff as Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump kneel before him. The caption reads: “You will kneel before Iran.”
'Hypocrisy'
Pro-government figures have hailed the move as a patriotic success. Conservative political reporter Hossein Saremi posted: “Today’s grand Iranian gathering showed that people and the state share one essence: Iran itself. Nothing can take our homeland away.”
Others, however, called the spectacle “hypocrisy.” Journalist Gholamhossein Pashaei wrote on X: “Every year you close Pasargadae to stop people from celebrating Cyrus Day, yet you unveil Shapur’s statue in Enghelab Square with drums and fireworks during Fatimiyya (mourning period)!”
Dissident commentator Hamid Asafi called the ceremony “a perfect snapshot of the Islamic Republic’s contradictions.”
On Telegram he wrote: “A week ago they closed Cyrus’s tomb out of fear of the crowds, and now they glorify Shapur in the same breath. The Islamic Republic fears living history but poses for selfies with its corpse.”
He added: “They know people no longer respond to rosaries and sermons. That’s why they’ve brought history back to the stage—in a controlled costume. If they can’t erase the past, they’ll try to own it.”
The irony deepened as UNESCO formally recognized Cyrus’s Charter as one of the earliest human-rights documents.
President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on X: “Iran, the cradle of dialogue, justice, and coexistence, can still inspire peace today.”
Users swiftly replied, questioning how such pride could coexist with a government that blocks access to Cyrus’s tomb each year to those wishing to visit it on his birthday.
