Iran’s Foreign Policy Is Changing in Real Time

Tehran’s foreign policy debate is heating up—and moving in unexpected directions.

Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian, former foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, and Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the Islamic Republic's founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, visit Khomeini's shrine in the south of Tehran on July 6, 2024. September 11, 2025, 4:16 AM Comment icon View Comments ( )

When Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, spoke at an event in late August, he dismissed calls for direct talks with Washington as “superficial” and declared the conflict with the United States “unsolvable.” America’s real aim, he said, was to make Iran “obedient”—an insult Iranians would resist “with all their strength.”

Khamenei’s words, thoug

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