Iran’s military threatened sustained attacks on US bases and interests across the Middle East on Sunday, while parliament speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf argued that Tehran must both fight and negotiate.
Some lawmakers, meanwhile, raised the prospect of withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and changing the country’s nuclear-weapons policy.
The developments highlighted the competing signals coming from Tehran as President Donald Trump’s administration weighed its next move in the nearly seven-month war. Trump returned to the White House from Camp David on Saturday evening, a day earlier than scheduled, without an official explanation.
Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya joint military command said it had received information that Washington, with approval from some regional countries, was preparing at a meeting in Europe to resume action against Iran.
“Every US base and interest in the region, without restriction or consideration, will be targeted by sustained, effective and painful attacks,” the command said.
It also warned that regional states supporting an American attack would be treated as participants and “could no longer expect restraint or leniency from Iran’s powerful armed forces.”
US diplomatic missions in nine Middle Eastern countries have meanwhile urged Americans to exercise heightened vigilance, warning of possible rapid escalation, flight cancellations and airspace closures. The alerts said Iran and Tehran-aligned groups could target US interests or locations associated with Americans.
The US military has also said it is strengthening regional air defenses, forming a coalition attack-drone unit and working with partners to keep the Strait of Hormuz and surrounding waters open.
Iranian officials responded with renewed assertions of control over the strategic waterway. IRGC deputy commander Mostafa Izadi said the strait remained under the control of Iran’s armed forces, while lawmaker Mohsen Zanganeh said restrictions there could impose significant economic pressure on the United States and other countries.
“The Strait of Hormuz is in Iran’s hands,” Zanganeh said, arguing that disruption would raise energy and production costs in East Asia and affect US technology companies with manufacturing operations there.
Against the military threats, Ghalibaf rejected the idea that Iran must choose between war and diplomacy.
“We must fight rationally and forcefully, and negotiate at the appropriate time with authority and reason,” he told a virtual session of parliament on Sunday.
Ghalibaf criticized two positions within Iran’s political establishment. He said one advocated war without presenting a credible path toward ending it and rejected diplomacy at the risk of drawing Iran into an open-ended conflict. The other, he said, underestimated the country’s capabilities and promoted accepting the adversary’s unilateral demands.
The first approach would keep Iran in a state of permanent crisis, while the second would sacrifice national resources and dignity, Ghalibaf said.
His remarks followed comments by Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei, who said Tehran had sent Washington seven conditions for renewed negotiations. Rezaei told Al Jazeera that Iran was seeking an end to the war on all fronts, the release of frozen Iranian assets and an end to the US naval blockade.
Rezaei said Qatar had conveyed Iran’s terms and Tehran was awaiting Trump’s response. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan also said Turkey and other countries had presented new proposals to Washington and Tehran.
The diplomatic signals were accompanied by increasingly explicit statements by lawmakers about Iran’s nuclear policy.
Ebrahim Azizi, chairman of parliament’s national security committee, said renewed negotiations with the United States would be meaningless and warned that Iran could reconsider its NPT membership if remaining in the treaty no longer served its national interests.
Azizi also threatened the International Atomic Energy Agency with “serious and regrettable responses” if it continued what he described as one-sided conduct.
Another lawmaker, Hosseinali Hajideligani, said remaining in the NPT brought Iran nothing but harm and urged parliament’s leadership to consider an urgent motion submitted by a group of lawmakers seeking withdrawal from the treaty.
“It is in our interest to withdraw from the NPT,” he said.
Tehran representative Kamran Ghazanfari went further, raising the possibility of a change in the country’s position on nuclear weapons if the survival of the Islamic Republic came under serious threat.
“If conditions change in such a way that we feel the existence of the Islamic Republic is seriously threatened, the leadership could take a position on nuclear weapons,” Ghazanfari said.
The comments stopped short of announcing a policy change. Rezaei said Saturday that Tehran remained committed to slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s fatwa prohibiting nuclear weapons and had not altered its doctrine, while adding: “We do not know what will happen in the future.”
The growing debate nevertheless marked a sharper public challenge to Iran’s longstanding declared nuclear position at a moment when military threats, maritime pressure and mediated diplomatic efforts were unfolding simultaneously.
The judiciary's news agency, Mizan, identified him as Hossein Pedaran and said he had been convicted of espionage and intelligence cooperation with Israel and sentenced to death, with the sentence upheld by the Supreme Court. He had been arrested in Isfahan on charges related to the war.
Mizan published a long account of what it described as Pedaran's confessions. According to that account, he first messaged the CIA offering to cooperate and received no reply, then contacted Mossad and was answered days later by an officer who introduced himself as "Ben" using a Dutch WhatsApp number.
The agency said he sent encrypted reports on military facilities and on staff who worked at them, including personal details and their spouses' phone numbers, used numerous SIM cards registered to others, and was given a remote-control device capable of taking hidden photographs.
It said he was paid in euros collected from a magnetic box behind a guardrail near a Tehran bridge and, on another occasion, from a coffee shop bathroom, and that a notebook on missile subjects marked "highly confidential" was found at his home.
Mizan said Pedaran had cut contact before the war and tried to reach Mossad again by Telegram once it began, and was arrested. It said he had a lawyer, that a forensic examination found no impairment of his judgment, and that the court held his information had contributed to strikes in which personnel were killed or wounded.
None of these claims can be independently verified, and Mizan did not provide any evidence for the allegations.
Iran's espionage cases are heard by Revolutionary Courts, which operate without public scrutiny of the evidence, and the state routinely broadcasts and publishes confessions that defendants and their families have later said were obtained through torture, prolonged solitary confinement and threats against relatives.
Rights organizations have documented the pattern for years, and have recorded cases in which people detained during protests were subsequently charged with working for Israel.
Iran has executed at least a dozen people on espionage or Mossad-collaboration charges since the June 2025 war with Israel, according to human rights groups, and the pace has increased since the recent war began in February.
Those executed this year include Ali Ardestani in January, Mehdi Farid, a former employee of the atomic energy organization, in April, and Omid Behzad and Pouria Safvat in August. Iran Human Rights recorded at least 1,639 executions in the country in 2025, the highest annual total since 1989.
