Iran International
President Masoud Pezeshkian’s UN speech won unusual praise across Iran’s political establishment Thursday, but emerging details of negotiations with the United States could soon test the president’s careful balancing act.
Conservatives embraced Pezeshkian’s defiant rhetoric at the General Assembly, while reformists highlighted his willingness to negotiate, allowing both sides to find something to welcome in an address that rejected surrender while keeping the door open to diplomacy.
The harder test may now come at the negotiating table.
US and Iranian negotiators in New York are exploring a phased agreement that could reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for Washington lifting its economic blockade of Iran, Reuters reported Thursday.
Neither side wants to surrender its main source of leverage before the other acts, and the talks remain far from an agreement.
Any substantive movement toward such an arrangement could sharpen the domestic divisions that Pezeshkian’s speech temporarily managed to straddle, particularly among hardliners who have opposed negotiations with Washington.
‘We will not surrender’
Pezeshkian’s speech Wednesday night drew praise from senior officials including Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei, Expediency Council Chairman Sadegh Amoli-Larijani and Army Commander Major General Amir Hatami.
Revolutionary Guards commander Ahmad Vahidi said Pezeshkian’s remarks reflected the position of the Iranian people.
“We are not afraid of war. This is the voice of the Iranian people that was heard by the world through him,” Vahidi wrote.
Acting Defense Minister Majid Ibn al-Reza also praised the speech, saying Iran’s message represented a “change in Iran’s defense doctrine” and that the country would accelerate the development of its military capabilities accordingly.
Kayhan, one of the strongest opponents of negotiations with the United States, said Pezeshkian had turned New York into a “court for prosecuting the crimes of Washington and Tel Aviv” and delivered a decisive response to US President Donald Trump.
Javan, a newspaper affiliated with the IRGC, put Pezeshkian’s “We will not surrender” phrase on its front page.
‘Strategic mistake’
Reformist newspapers, however, emphasized another part of the same address: Pezeshkian’s stated readiness for negotiations and engagement with the world.
Their headlines included “We are not afraid of war, we do not shy away from negotiations for peace” and “Neither warmongering nor fear of negotiations,” illustrating the markedly different ways the speech was being presented to domestic audiences.
The balancing act did not satisfy everyone.
Hardline journalist Davoud Modarresian described parts of the speech as worthy of praise but criticized Pezeshkian for travelling to New York and continuing to advocate negotiations.
In the face of Trump’s threats against Iran, he argued, declaring readiness for talks amounted to a “strategic mistake.”
Other hardline commentators complained that Pezeshkian had failed to demand retribution for US and Israeli attacks.
A speech for home?
Reformist journalist Ahmad Zeidabadi, meanwhile, questioned the enthusiastic reception from some of Pezeshkian’s most determined opponents of negotiations with the United States.
He asked whether those praising the president also supported his references to negotiations, or were selectively highlighting his more confrontational remarks in an effort to push the president in a more radical direction.
Some reformists saw the combination differently. Journalist Mohammad Sohofi argued that Pezeshkian sometimes employed populist slogans precisely to reduce tensions and marginalize hardline opponents of his policies.
Former Tehran Chamber of Commerce chairman Hossein Selahvarzi said the speech appeared designed more for a domestic audience than for the international community.
“Pezeshkian’s speech seemed to have been written more to be heard inside the country than to convince the world,” he wrote, arguing that the president should have presented more concrete proposals and initiatives.
Speaking at the 81st General Assembly on Wednesday, the president said Tehran was ready for dialogue but rejected "the language of force," called Donald Trump's words a sign of "the character of a bully and the logic of force," and held up photographs of the late Ali Khamenei and of schoolchildren killed in the strike on Minab in the war's first hours.
Three things drew the messages: the gap between the president's posture abroad and the state's conduct at home; the crackdown of January that he did not name; and the way he spoke.
'Only brave in front of us'
The most frequent reaction set the president's words in New York beside the state's words in Iran.
"The Islamic Republic wants dialogue with anyone stronger than itself," one wrote, "and bullies its own defenseless people."
Another pointed to Pezeshkian's repeated use of the word force: inside Iran the state threatens America, he wrote, and in New York it asks "why are you bullying us."
The president's own language on the January protests was not far from writers' minds. In August he called the protests a "riot" and described those who reported the killings as "cowards and traitors," remarks that had drawn an earlier wave of messages. On January 11, days after the killings, he had called the protesters "terrorists" and demanded a "decisive" response from the security forces.
One writer put it in a single line: for 47 years the Islamic Republic has been busy with terror, and now Pezeshkian comes to play the victim.
Another watched the delivery rather than the text. "People like Pezeshkian only claim power and swagger in front of us," he wrote. "From the trembling voice, the stumbles and the level of stress in his speech, it was clear how brave he is in front of real superpowers."
What he left out
Pezeshkian never used the word protests. The Iranians he described in the streets these past seven months were the crowds at the state's own rallies, organized by the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij, out at night, in his telling, to defend the country against people "America and Israel had incited and put guns in the hands of."
The millions who came out against the state, and the tens of thousands killed, did not appear in the speech at all.
A writer from Qeshm, the island in the Strait of Hormuz, said the president had repeated the state's version of the protests instead of speaking about Iran's own victims, including those killed on January 8 and 9 and in earlier crackdowns.
Others treated the speech as an occasion to list what it omitted: the protests of December 2017 and January 2018, Bloody November in 2019, the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising of 2022, the January 2026 uprising, and the poisoning of girls' schools in 2022 and 2023.
The messages came days after the UN fact-finding mission on Iran presented its latest report. Its chair, Sara Hossain, said the January crackdown had met protests with an "extremely violent" response, and that many of the violations, including killings and imprisonment, amounted to crimes against humanity.
Several writers said that Iranians themselves had been pushed to the margins of the speech. "Pezeshkian was more a defender of the Revolutionary Guards and of Palestine," one wrote, "than someone who wanted to say anything about the people of his own country."
How he said it
The third and most personal thread was the president's manner: his walk, his delivery, his command of his own text.
Many described his bearing as a street tough's swagger and compared him to Shaban Bi-Mokh, the Tehran strongman whose mobs helped bring down the government in the 1953 coup and whose nickname means "the brainless." Writers said his grip on the speech was so weak that a passerby pulled off the street and put at the UN lectern would have spoken more fluently and said more.
A writer from Tehran said he had been ashamed to watch Pezeshkian represent Iran, in a speech he found empty of manners, culture or "any diplomatic decorum."
"Why can't he speak properly?" another asked. "He talked as if someone had a gun to his head."
One writer compared the speech to those of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi and said the level of language from the president of the Islamic Republic had left him astonished.
Several concluded that the delivery reflected the office. Pezeshkian, they wrote, has no authority of his own; he reads what is written for him and handed to him.
"That is why they made him president," one wrote. "The text they write for him usually has a fixed structure, and it is on file at the foreign ministry and the presidency."
The one voice that could settle what Tehran wants from the diplomacy under way in New York has not been heard at all. Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has said nothing publicly about the contacts with Washington, the attacks on his foreign minister, or the speech itself.
He did not receive the president before the trip. And this is the first UN General Assembly in 37 years at which his father was not Iran's supreme leader.
What changed, and what did not
Before the speech, the hardline press was hostile to the trip itself. Kayhan warned that "New York is not a place for smiles and negotiations" and that the General Assembly should be turned into "a court for US crimes." Fars, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, wrote that Pezeshkian should not have gone at all.
Moderates pushed the other way: the daily Etemad recalled the meetings Iranian presidents failed to hold with Bill Clinton in 2000 and Barack Obama in 2013, and the reformist Mehdi Karroubi urged Pezeshkian to meet Donald Trump.
Pezeshkian did neither. After Trump used the UN podium to threaten to "annihilate" Iran, the president said he had rewritten his speech. He held up photographs of children killed in the strike on a school in Minab in the war's first hours alongside a portrait of the late Ali Khamenei, said Iran had defended itself "powerfully," said it remained open to negotiation, and said it would not accept "the language of coercion."
There was no offer in it, no gesture toward a meeting, nothing a hardliner could call weakness.
The praise followed within hours, and it praised the defiance.
Revolutionary Guards spokesman Hossein Mohebbi said the president had "at the heart of the system of arrogance, reproduced the message of power, pride, dignity and hope of a nation," in a statement carried by IRNA.
Iran would rely on unity "from the country's highest executive official to the brave fighters in the field and the people in the streets," he said.
Mohammad Mokhber, an adviser to the supreme leader, called Pezeshkian "a worthy representative and the voice of all Iranians" who had been "decisive, reasoned and logical."
The message, he wrote on X, was clear: "we will not bow our heads before a bully, we will not forget our martyrs and we will make the aggressors regret their actions."
Ali Abdollahi, chief of staff of the armed forces and commander of the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, Iran's wartime command, said the people "through Dr. Pezeshkian, slapped the criminal president of the United States before the eyes of the world," and that the armed forces stood "in harmony and in one voice with the people and the respected president."
Army commander Amir Hatami followed on Thursday. "Mr. President, well done. We sincerely thank you," he said, calling the address "a manifestation of the unity and coordination of all Iran against the bullying enemy."
Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf wrote that Pezeshkian "spoke not just for a government, but for a 3,000-year-old civilization."
Every one of those statements praised the speech for what it refused. None mentioned the talks.
The missing voice
In previous years, state media made a point of showing the president meeting the supreme leader before a major trip, including before the General Assembly. The meeting was the signal: the president traveled with the leader's mandate, and everyone in Tehran knew it. No such meeting was announced this year. Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen or heard in public since he was named to succeed his father in March, and he has issued nothing on New York.
The closest anyone has come to speaking for him was Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, one of his military advisers, on Wednesday. "If the Supreme Leader has deemed it expedient and left the government's hands open in the negotiations, that is an important act of prudence," Safavi said on state television. Even the adviser spoke in the conditional.
That leaves the generals' applause doing a job the leader's meeting used to do. Their statements told Tehran that the speech was approved. What they did not tell anyone is whether the contacts around it are.
The fight that did not stop
The argument over those contacts continued through the praise, and it is an argument about authorization, not about whether to talk.
Ebrahim Rezaei, of parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, challenged Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Wednesday over his meeting in New York with US envoy Steve Witkoff. "
On the basis of which authorization and policy did the foreign minister meet the representative of the aggressor enemy?" he wrote on X. Iran's seven conditions had already been conveyed to Washington, he said, and "nothing comes from such an illegal meeting except a sign of weakness."
Tasnim, also affiliated with the Guards, called Araghchi's explanation "childish and vile" and, citing Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, said the approved plan had been to pass the conditions through mediators, not to meet Witkoff. It called the meeting "a major error." Fars argued the contact had eased pressure on Washington without securing anything.
On Thursday Ali Khezrian, another member of the Committee, said Araghchi had not been authorized to hold direct talks and that MPs had registered a motion to impeach him. "Araghchi must, after returning from his trip, answer in parliament on what basis this conversation with the American side took place," he said.
The foreign minister had defenders. MP Mojtaba Zarei said his own inquiries showed Araghchi had been authorized to meet Witkoff. "There was and is no negotiation," he wrote; the seven conditions had been delivered directly to Trump's envoy. Mohebbi, for the Guards, had already set the terms: "We don't reject diplomacy, but we impose our own conditions. Our defensive power will be proven in the field."
The man who stayed in his seat
A second row concerned Nasser Asadi, a member of Iran's UN mission who remained in the hall during Trump's address. Hossein Ali Haji-Deligani, deputy head of parliament's Article 90 Committee, which handles public complaints against state bodies, called it "a source of shame and regret" and said MPs would use "all supervisory tools, including the impeachment of Araghchi." Hardline accounts contrasted Asadi with delegations that walked out.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei defended him. "Iran's seat in a place such as the United Nations General Assembly is our trench," he said. "If we are supposed to leave this trench because of the harsh words, hostility and insults of others, then we certainly have not done our duty."
As President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived for the UN General Assembly, the messages came in with a phrase that recurred until it became the story's own name: the "killers in suits." The demand attached to it was the same almost every time. Arrest them.
Voices from Iran draws on messages sent to Iran International by people inside the country. Names are withheld for their safety.
The demand
A writer from Fardis, on the western edge of Karaj, pointed to the latest human rights reports and asked why officials responsible for crushing 40,000 protesters in January were not being detained in New York.
Another wrote simply that now they were there, this was a good chance to arrest Pezeshkian and Araghchi.
The UN fact-finding mission on Iran said in its new report that many of the violations committed in the crackdown on the January 2026 protests, including murder, imprisonment and severe deprivation of liberty, amounted to crimes against humanity. Its chair, Sara Hossain, said the true number of victims could be "significantly" higher than the government's own figure.
One writer suggested that while the officials were at the United Nations, footage and documents of the killings should be handed to the same body. Others addressed Donald Trump directly, asking him to act on the crackdown rather than host or negotiate with the delegation.
And several turned to Zohran Mamdani, who as a candidate for mayor of New York said he would have Benjamin Netanyahu arrested if the Israeli prime minister set foot in the city, citing the International Criminal Court warrant against him.
"The mayor of New York who wanted to arrest Netanyahu," one wrote, "does he by any chance not intend to arrest the criminals in suits who sit on the Supreme National Security Council and whose signatures are on the massacre of January 8 and 9?"
The visas
A second thread was anger at what writers called the West's double standard: condemning the repression while receiving the men accused of it.
"My question is this," one wrote. "Didn't Mr. Trump always talk about the January massacre? So why has he given visas to the ringleaders of the killers of Iran's children?"
The State Department has said that admitting the core members of the Iranian delegation was an obligation Washington carries as host of the United Nations, and that the delegation's movements were restricted. The US government also agreed to Araghchi's request for a security detail during his stay.
"Bodies attached to the United Nations say the leaders of the Islamic Republic have committed crimes against humanity," another writer addressed the president. "Why are they now freely, and even under your escort, in America and at the UN?"
Not everyone expected an arrest. One writer said it was probably beyond the West to detain the officials, and proposed instead that Iranians abroad gather outside UN headquarters.
'A puppet'
The other constant in the messages was that Pezeshkian does not decide anything, and that his presence at the UN is a performance of the system that does.
Writers called him a marionette, a wind-up doll, and the tea boy of the power mafia, and called the trip a circus staged for legitimacy.
Some pointed to how little it achieved. One wrote that for years the Islamic Republic's only gain from attending the UN had been shopping in New York, and that Trump had taken even that away.
Last September the State Department restricted the Iranian delegation's access to wholesale and luxury stores during its stay.
Beneath the mockery ran a fear. Several writers worried that a deal might be struck, and that the file on the killings would be pushed aside for it.
