From hiding in bomb shelters to visiting New York, Iran’s leaders seize the opportunity

By Mostafa Salem, CNN

(CNN) — Seven months after escaping with his life from a US-coordinated Israeli airstrike that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s top diplomat walked the streets of Manhattan this week under the protection of the US Secret Service.

As leaders gathered in New York for the UN General Assembly, Abbas Araghchi and Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, have seized the opportunity to make their case to the world, casting the Islamic Republic as a country abiding by international law against “bullies” who are not.

Araghchi met with more than two dozen diplomats, including counterparts from more than ten European countries and even Jordan’s foreign minister, whose country Iran had attacked. More importantly, he held a rare direct meeting with US envoy Steve Witkoff and told western media that Iran had put a new offer on the table.

In his address to the UN gathering, Pezeshkian said the Islamic Republic would never “bow down” – a line that landed well with hardliners at home, some of whom had opposed the trip at a time when war-time sanctions and a US naval blockade are choking Iran’s economy.

On Thursday, Pezeshkian sat with Western journalists and think-tank analysts at a New York hotel to lay out his government’s thinking – a far cry from the morning of February 28, when he was feared dead after vanishing for hours amid waves of US-Israeli strikes.

In previous decades, Iran’s turns at the United Nations General Assembly have garnered attention, but under the shadow of war, this year’s visit became the main event. Tehran’s officials planned the visit strategically , mindful of both global and domestic attention.

Hardliners in Iran initially criticized Pezeshkian and Araghchi’s diplomatic overtures to Washington, deeming a decision to visit the country actively waging war against them as a sign of surrender. Araghchi, in particular, came under fire from Iran’s conservative lawmakers for meeting Witkoff.

“Foreign policy and national security are not arenas for recklessness,” a hardline lawmaker, Ebrahim Rezaei, wrote on X Wednesday. “The foreign minister must explain on which authorization his meeting with the representative of the enemy was conducted?”

Yet, despite the high risk of a political misstep, Iranian officials staged a visit that played well at home, revived a diplomatic track with their adversary, declared a message of survival to the world and delivered their thinking to the American public.

Pezeshkian declared Iran’s demands from the UN podium and held bilateral meetings with his counterparts. By contrast, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who co-launched the war on Iran, was met with protests on the streets of New York and a mass walkout of UN delegates as he delivered his speech from the floor.

Fresh proposal

Araghchi’s meeting with Witkoff to restart talks was an attempt to break three months of diplomatic deadlock.

Still, US officials were quick to caution that an agreement would take time.

“If there’s going to be a deal with Iran…it’s going to involve a lot of hard work over a period of time, and it will engage and involve mediators as well,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters this week.

Iran said it had presented a proposal to the US that would re-open the Strait of Hormuz - in return for Washington lifting its economic blockade of Iran - and restart the push towards a “final deal.”

Tehran’s fresh offer requires Washington to meet a set of conditions within seven days, Araghchi told reporters. He declined to elaborate on those conditions but said that they were “nothing more” than what was included in the Memorandum of Understanding - an ill-fated agreement signed between both parties in June that quickly collapsed.

While a swift reopening of the strait and a resumption of talks over Tehran’s nuclear program could be tempting to Trump, obstacles remain.

Iran’s conditions include the US waiving sanctions on oil sales, lifting the naval blockade and ending other economic penalties imposed after the breakdown of the agreement back in June, a regional source familiar with the talks told CNN.

In the new proposal, Iran wants Washington to take the first steps, an expert told CNN.

“The offer now is essentially the same bargain, but with a very different sequence,” Sina Toossi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C told CNN. “The US takes concrete steps first, and only then does Iran ease its pressure over Hormuz.”

Under the June deal, which at the time was widely seen as favorable to Iran, the US agreed to lift a naval blockade, end sanctions on the regime, set up a $300 billion fund to reconstruct the country and accept the Islamic Republic’s role in managing a narrow waterway where a fifth of global oil crosses daily.

The agreement quickly collapsed after the Trump administration accused Tehran of firing on ships in the Hormuz. Iran, in turn, accused Washington of its own breaches by launching strikes on Iran and refusing to release cash frozen in banks abroad.

“The central message from Pezeshkian’s New York trip is that Iran genuinely wants a deal,” Toossi added, “but it is no longer willing to strike a deal and de-escalate first and simply trust that Washington will follow through.”

Iran has also pursued a separate diplomatic track with Oman, the only other country that borders the Strait of Hormuz, on how to manage the waterway. Iran has in the past demanded future payment for managing the Strait, but it remains unclear if that demand is part of Tehran’s new offer. It’s also unclear if the new Iranian-Omani framework has been presented to the Trump administration. An attempt to bring neighboring Arab states on board failed last week.

One of the bigger lingering questions is whether Iran will accept a new negotiation that Washington could use to extract further concessions.

Both sides are currently locked in a showdown over who can live with the status quo the longest. Iran is advertising a high pain threshold while Trump insists that he will not be hurt in the upcoming midterm elections even as gas prices climb at the pump.

So, Tehran’s leaders might have had a good few days – but it is unclear how long the glow will last.

“They’re waiting to see how I do in the midterm election,” Trump said in his speech at the UN. “What they don’t realize is that I’m not running. I did that already and won in a landslide.”

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