The firm stance comes amid what Iranian officials describe as continuing war conditions. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told a conference in Tehran on Wednesday that “the country is truly in war conditions and the war continues. We have not reached peace conditions and are away from it, so all decisions must be made within war conditions.”
Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir visited Tehran on Wednesday to discuss the war and tensions in Yemen. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was in Tehran on Monday after talks with Gulf states. There were also indications of visits by other Arab officials, and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is reported to have met Israeli security officials earlier in the week.
Despite the activity, Iran’s conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, closed since the start of the war, remain unmet. Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf told Munir that Iran expected Washington to honour conditions offered in New York last month, including returning to a June memorandum of understanding that provided for the removal of the US naval blockade on southern Iranian ports, oil sanctions waivers, unfreezing of assets, and a pledge for talks on a broader nuclear deal.
Iran’s nuclear programme, which the Trump administration cited as a reason for launching the war on February 28, is treated by Tehran as a sovereign right. Rezaei called enriched uranium “national wealth”. Before the June 2025 attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities, the IAEA estimated Iran possessed 440 kg of uranium enriched to 60 percent. Subsequent strikes in 2026 severely damaged infrastructure, and the IAEA has been denied access since the war began.
Ellie Geranmayeh, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Al Jazeera that Tehran is unwilling to give up enriched uranium without guarantees of sanctions relief. “The Iranians have made it very clear that they are willing to negotiate over the fate of the highly enriched uranium or access for international monitors, but that has to be directly linked with a very clear implementation protocol for US sanctions relief,” she said. “We are very far from those types of negotiations at this stage.”
US media, citing unnamed officials, reported Tuesday that the Pentagon is sending the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group and a Marine unit to the Middle East, presenting President Trump with a range of strike options after the US midterm elections on November 3.