Iran International
Conflicting voices in Tehran on the competing prospects of war and diplomacy with Washington may be deliberate, but they more likely reflect an absence of consensus at the top.
A quick look at the main headlines on the IRGC-linked Tasnim News Agency on Monday captured the mood in Tehran: “Possibility of Iran–US Negotiations Confirmed,” “Implications for America if War Spreads Across the Region,” and “With Trump’s Conditions, There Will Be No Negotiations.”
Together, they betray a system simultaneously preparing for talks, threatening escalation, and insisting negotiations are impossible.
Despite the government’s efforts to project calm beneath Tehran’s smog-covered skyline, a speech on Sunday by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei only deepened the sense of foreboding.
Khamenei recounted a joke from his native province of Khorasan about a man boasting of how close he was to marrying the woman he loved. “Only two steps remain,” the man says. “I ask her father for her hand, and he replies: ‘How dare you!’”
Those seated around Khamenei, including his financial confidant Mohammad Mokhber, smiled uncertainly—perhaps only gradually realizing that, in Khamenei’s telling, the hopeful suitor was US President Donald Trump, and the disapproving father was Khamenei himself.
‘American graveyard’
For opportunistic politicians and commentators in Tehran, the message was unmistakable: recent claims by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and security chief Ali Larijani about ongoing negotiations with Washington mattered far less than the Supreme Leader’s evident reluctance to engage.
On the central question—whether Iran is prepared to make concessions—Khamenei remains firmly unwilling to yield.
Hardliners, who had briefly lowered their volume in anticipation of a possible diplomatic opening, appeared to have received the memo and quickly returned to form.
In parliament, the cleric Mohammad Taghi Naghdali declared that Iran should not only close the Strait of Hormuz but also disrupt Europe’s shipping routes and gas export networks, while calling for reduced cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The rhetoric soon veered into the absurd. The managing director of Tehran’s main cemetery, Behesht-e Zahra, claimed he had prepared 5,000 graves for US soldiers he believed would be killed on the first day of a war with Iran.
The statement was swiftly refuted by Tehran city councillor Jafar Tashakori, who warned that reckless remarks could trigger crises “far beyond domestic politics.”
Vested interests
Even seasoned analysts struggled to impose coherence on the moment. Political commentator Ali Bigdeli said no one could say with certainty whether war was coming, arguing that Iran’s only viable path forward lay in direct talks with the United States.
While Iran’s official position, articulated by Araghchi, is that any talks must be confined to the nuclear file, Bigdeli cautioned that Washington’s ambitions extend to Tehran’s missile program and its regional allies.
“Trump is not interested in a direct war with Iran,” Bigdeli told the moderate outlet Khabar Online. “But he is unlikely to leave the region with his armada without achieving something.”
Ebrahim Rezai, spokesperson for parliament’s National Security Committee, cited a briefing by IRGC Aerospace Force commanders to assert that any US attack would trap American forces in a regional war.
Yet another conservative figure, Hossein Naghavi Hosseini, cautioned that those beating the drums of war in Tehran were playing into Israel’s hands.
Taken together, the cacophony points less to confidence than to paralysis: a system torn between waiting for a signal from the top and being pulled in opposing directions by vested interests, each pressing for the outcome it prefers.
Tehran’s unveiling of a towering statue depicting the Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling before pre-Islamic Persian King Shapur I has renewed criticism of the Islamic Republic’s appeal to nationalist sentiment following the June war with Israel.
For over forty years, the theocracy purged ancient Persian history from schoolbooks, replacing it with post-Islamic narratives. But after the 12-day conflict with Israel, officials have turned to the distant pre-Islamic past to rally a divided society.
From murals of ancient kings and soldiers to patriotic songs added to Shi’ite mourning ceremonies performed before Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Tehran now embraces imagery once deemed heretical by its own revolutionary ethos.
'Kneel before Iran' campaign
Tehran’s Revolution (Enghelab) Square was the scene of an unusual spectacle on Friday as officials unveiled a massive bronze statue depicting Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling in submission before Sassanid King Shapur I, commemorating Iran’s victory at the Battle of Edessa (260 AD).
The event was held under the slogan “Kneel before Iran,” part of what authorities describe as a campaign to project “national unity and historical pride” following the June war with Israel.
Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani, a staunch ultraconservative, said on X: “Enmity with Great Iran can only end in kneeling before this historic nation.”
Municipal official Davood Goodarzi said the installation would be accompanied by visual displays depicting “other victories of Iranians over foreign aggressors,” including the defeat of British forces by local commander Rais-Ali Delvari, Mirza Kuchak Khan’s resistance against Russian troops, and Surena’s triumph over Rome at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE.
The goal, Goodarzi said, is “strengthening concepts such as national dignity, social unity, and Iranian identity.”
The statue, he said, would remain temporarily at Revolution Square before being moved to a city gateway “where it will stand as the first emblem of Iran before diplomats and foreign visitors.”
Unveiled women were allowed to attend the unveiling ceremony—an uncommon scene at events organized by Tehran’s ultra-hardline municipality.
The turn to the pre-Islamic past
The sharp reversal also recalls remarks once made by Khamenei. In a 2011 speech, he asserted that “all the great military victories of this nation came after Islam,” dismissing pre-Islamic accounts as “things that are not documented.”
In 1987, he had said that prophets triumphed over kings such as Cyrus and that “nothing remains of these monarchs in history but names remembered with derision.”
Nevertheless, pro-government social media accounts have now gone so far as to circulate posters equating Khamenei himself with Shapur, showing him standing with a staff as Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump kneel before him. The caption reads: “You will kneel before Iran.”
'Hypocrisy'
Pro-government figures have hailed the move as a patriotic success. Conservative political reporter Hossein Saremi posted: “Today’s grand Iranian gathering showed that people and the state share one essence: Iran itself. Nothing can take our homeland away.”
Others, however, called the spectacle “hypocrisy.” Journalist Gholamhossein Pashaei wrote on X: “Every year you close Pasargadae to stop people from celebrating Cyrus Day, yet you unveil Shapur’s statue in Enghelab Square with drums and fireworks during Fatimiyya (mourning period)!”
Dissident commentator Hamid Asafi called the ceremony “a perfect snapshot of the Islamic Republic’s contradictions.”
On Telegram he wrote: “A week ago they closed Cyrus’s tomb out of fear of the crowds, and now they glorify Shapur in the same breath. The Islamic Republic fears living history but poses for selfies with its corpse.”
He added: “They know people no longer respond to rosaries and sermons. That’s why they’ve brought history back to the stage—in a controlled costume. If they can’t erase the past, they’ll try to own it.”
The irony deepened as UNESCO formally recognized Cyrus’s Charter as one of the earliest human-rights documents.
President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on X: “Iran, the cradle of dialogue, justice, and coexistence, can still inspire peace today.”
Users swiftly replied, questioning how such pride could coexist with a government that blocks access to Cyrus’s tomb each year to those wishing to visit it on his birthday.