Tehran disputes surface as IRGC-linked media deny new Hormuz position
President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that Iranian officials had held three hours of talks with US special envoy Steve Witkoff on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, the first such contact since Vice President JD Vance met an Iranian delegation to agree a memorandum of understanding in Switzerland in June. Trump said a further meeting would take place “in the very near future.”
Witkoff told reporters he felt “very good about the meeting.” Iranian officials confirmed the talks involved Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and were mediated by diplomats from Qatar. A face-to-face meeting between Pezeshkian and Trump had largely been ruled out as too combustible.
In remarks to the General Assembly earlier in the day, Trump framed the choice ahead of him in stark terms. “Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?” he asked, adding that he expected Iran to make a deal immediately after the US midterm elections.
A senior Iranian official told the Japanese news agency Kyodo and Reuters that Tehran was prepared to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days if Washington took steps to ease its military and economic pressure, including ending its blockade of Iranian ports and halting military operations related to the waterway. The official claimed the position had been approved by Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, and the country’s supreme national security council.
Some Iranian media close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps denied any new position had been adopted, reflecting disputes inside Tehran between hardliners and figures such as Pezeshkian over the value of any talks. According to the Guardian, experience has shown that initially appealing Iranian offers can emerge to be more complex once the small print is revealed, and resolving those disputes is not made easier by the low profile kept by the Supreme Leader, normally the arbiter in such internal ructions. The IRGC itself issued a statement that there was “no contradiction between staging negotiations and waging war at the same time,” a position echoed by Iran’s chief negotiator Mohammad Ghalibaf in remarks delivered online to the Iranian parliament.
Previously, Iran had set seven onerous preconditions for lifting its blockade on the strait, one of the world’s key oil shipping routes, including an end to the US war “on all fronts” and a commitment by the US to end all aggressive actions against Iran, including sanctions. The new position, as reported, would involve relaxing some of those preconditions, and according to the Guardian, the new preconditions were less stringent than those issued by other senior Iranian figures in the previous 48 hours.
In his UN address, Trump also called on other countries to isolate Iran economically, including by demanding that all nations prevent any Iranian civilian planes from landing at their airports. US diplomats have warned Turkey and Iraq to comply or face sanctions. Many of the Gulf states were also planning to urge Trump to do more to press Israel to meet its commitments under the peace plan to withdraw from Gaza.
Trump’s speech prompted most of the Iranian delegation to leave the General Assembly hall. Pezeshkian is scheduled to address the assembly on Wednesday.
A deal between the US and Iran would have to begin with an agreement between Iran and Oman on a new route for commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, which largely runs through Iranian waters. The Gulf states have not endorsed such a deal. Saudi Arabia also wanted to be a signatory and authoriser of the route, but Iran insisted it had to be endorsed only by the two countries in which the strait’s waterways pass.
Tehran is under growing pressure as the US blockade of its oil exports has disrupted its currency reserves and fueled domestic inflation.
Several speakers at the General Assembly used their remarks to criticize Israel over its conduct in Gaza. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan prompted a walkout by the Israeli delegation when he described Gaza as “the world’s largest graveyard and the most inhumane and shameful concentration camp of our time.” He added: “Israel refuses to stop the occupation. We are faced with a genocidal mindset that can never get enough of killing. No one with a sense of humanity, mercy, or compassion, no one guided by justice and conscience can possibly remain indifferent to this picture.”
Jordan’s King Abdullah told the assembly: “With Israel, resolutions end where they began on paper. This result is a state without restraint. This government’s sense of impunity has reached terrifying levels. It no longer feels compelled to ask: ‘Can we get away with this?’ It already knows the answer.” What was unfolding across the occupied West Bank, the king said, amounted to “elements of a single policy to compel an entire population to leave their land. And there is a name for that: forced displacement. And that is a war crime.”
A statement from eight Gulf foreign ministers called on Israel to immediately fulfil its outstanding commitments under the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire agreement, including ensuring “the immediate, safe and unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance and early recovery supplies” and facilitating rehabilitation of critical infrastructure. The ministers reiterated their categorical rejection of any measures aimed at expelling Palestinians or altering the territorial or demographic character of occupied Palestinian territory.