On a whirlwind trip to New York this week, Mahmoud Pezeshkian, the President of Iran, looked exhausted. His country has been at war with the United States and Israel for seven months. Dark, puffy bags sagged under his eyes. His tone—at the opening of the U.N. General Assembly, on the sidelines of negotiations with U.S. envoys, in meetings with other world leaders, and at briefings for nuclear specialists, think-tank experts, and members of the media—alternated between bitter, biting, and bewildered.
The scenes were often surreal. Since February 28th, when the war began, Pezeshkian has frequently run his government from an underground location, to avoid the fate of his former boss, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and dozens of other politicians and military officers, all killed in air strikes. This week, however, the U.S. Secret Service and the New York Police Department provided Pezeshkian protection in coördination with his own security detail of Revolutionary Guards, an Iranian military branch that has repeatedly been targeted during the war. It was the first time that the President of a country at war with the United States has been allowed to pay a visit.
In New York, Iran made a new bid to end the conflict during indirect talks with U.S. envoys. The proposal, which would expedite a resolution in a mere seven days—peace on steroids—called for the U.S. to lift economic sanctions and end its blockade of Iranian ships, and for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz to all international shipping, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said on Thursday. It “would be much better” if the process were completed before the U.S. midterm elections in November, he continued. But Tehran is “in no hurry.”
The proposal also outlined an end to hostilities between the U.S and Iran, a ceasefire in Israel’s campaign in Lebanon, the release of an estimated twelve billion dollars in frozen Iranian assets, and the resumption of negotiations on the future of Iran’s controversial nuclear program. These reflected the main points in the so-called memorandum of understanding negotiated in Islamabad in June and signed, from afar, by Presidents Trump and Pezeshkian. That deal broke down in July, when Iran struck three ships that were passing through an “unauthorized” route in the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. responded with fresh rounds of punishing air strikes.
The new proposal was relayed to the U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner during three hours of indirect talks, mediated by Qatar. Witkoff described the meetings as “encouraging, constructive and successful.” Trump called them “very good.”
Earlier in the day, however, Trump had mused, during a speech on the U.N. floor, about whether he should “annihilate the Islamic Republic, and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again.” Trump said that he was willing to drive Iran “into Hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations” if it does not agree to end the war on his more ambitious terms, which include sweeping steps to dismantle any remaining aspects of a nuclear program that could be used to make a weapon. On Friday night, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had indeed rejected Iran’s proposal, and that he expects to resume bombing the country after the midterms, though an unnamed U.S. official said that Washington and Tehran continue to negotiate.