Iran Rules Out Surrender as US-Iran Talks Yield No Breakthrough at UN

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday that Tehran would never surrender to the United States, while insisting his country still believed in diplomacy. His remarks came a day after President Donald Trump used the same forum to threaten to "annihilate" Iran.

The two speeches, delivered a day apart in New York, framed the first indirect contacts between Washington and Tehran in months. Those talks appeared to produce no public concessions from either side on ending the conflict in the Middle East.

In his address, Pezeshkian described Iran's military actions as defensive and said the country was not pursuing nuclear weapons.

Indirect contacts and conditions

The UN gathering provided the setting on Tuesday for the first known indirect talks since a ceasefire collapsed in July. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner communicated through mediators on the sidelines, according to officials. Some Iranian state media initially reported that Araqchi and Witkoff had met, but officials later clarified that the exchange was not face-to-face.

Trump described the meeting with mediators as "very productive" and said he saw "a lot of momentum for them to make a deal." Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said Tehran had engaged Washington through a Qatari mediator and conveyed conditions, including an end to the war on all fronts and a halt to US "acts of aggression."

Hardliner backlash

The diplomatic contact drew criticism in Iranian media associated with hardliners. An opinion piece in the semi-official Tasnim news agency, which is associated with the Revolutionary Guards, argued that Araqchi's contacts with Witkoff and Kushner amounted to "a major gift to Trump," since Iran had already conveyed its terms.

Iranian sources said the delegation had been instructed by the Supreme National Security Council not to meet the Americans face-to-face. The council includes figures selected by Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the supreme leader, who has not appeared in public since replacing his father, who was killed on the war's first day. One Iranian journalist covering the visit said some hardliners viewed the trip to New York itself as an insult to the memory of the slain leader, Ali Khamenei.

New flashpoint over sanctions

Iran also threatened to act against its neighbours if they comply with new US sanctions intended to ground Iranian civilian aircraft worldwide. Washington has said it will impose secondary sanctions on any country that allows Iranian flights after Wednesday. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, told state television that Iran would ensure neighbouring countries' airports could not function if they stop Iranian flights.

Oil prices and shipping

The diplomatic opening helped keep oil prices near two-week lows, with Brent crude hovering around $100 a barrel after surging earlier in the month when Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis launched a major offensive that threatened traffic through the Red Sea, an alternative Saudi export route.

The war, launched by Trump in February alongside Israel as "Operation Epic Fury," has lasted nearly seven months, killing thousands, disrupting global energy supplies and spreading to other countries in the region, particularly Lebanon and more recently Yemen.

An interim agreement reached in June and signed by Trump and Pezeshkian would have given Iran its main demands — lifting financial sanctions and unfreezing assets — in return for talks on limiting its nuclear programme. That deal unravelled within weeks over shipping rules in the Strait of Hormuz, a conduit for a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas before the war. Iran wants to exert control and collect fees from ships using the strait, which Washington rejects.

In the latest reported attack in the strait, Britain's UKMTO maritime security agency said a cargo ship had been hit by projectiles, causing two casualties among the crew. The crew was evacuated and the ship was on fire and adrift.

Despite near-daily attacks, traffic through the strait has picked up in recent weeks. Oil producers pay shipping companies fees of as much as a quarter of a cargo's value to take the wartime risk of sailing through the strait with transponders switched off, before transferring crude to other vessels on the far side. Exports from the United Arab Emirates have recovered to pre-war levels, and Saudi Arabia has sold 60 million barrels of Gulf oil for this month and next, to be delivered beyond the strait off the coast of Oman.

Nevertheless, a third of Gulf oil is estimated to be missing from global supplies. Shortages have particularly hit refined products such as diesel, causing inflation, pushing up interest rates and hurting Trump's Republicans.