Iran’s security chief, parliament speaker hail Leader’s remarks on national unity, social cohesion

Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), Mohsen Rezaei (R) and Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf

Iran’s top security official and the country’s parliament speaker have hailed Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei’s remarks on national unity and social cohesion, describing them as a clear guiding principle for senior authorities.

On Friday, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), Mohsen Rezaei said Ayatollah Khamenei’s remarks, particularly the Leader’s emphasis on avoiding “discouraging remarks” and “imagined dichotomy” and his directive that “anything that undermines social cohesion is prohibited,” have left no room for interpretation.

The comments, Rezaei added, “constitute a clear and unequivocal strategy for everyone.” “Today, national unity and social cohesion are among the most fundamental components of national power and security,” the official stated.

Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf similarly said the Leader’s message should serve as the guiding principle for all officials, stressing the need to avoid actions that could harm social cohesion. “Any action that harms social cohesion is, for all of us, both a national and religious prohibition,” Qalibaf wrote in a post on X. “We pledge to the people and the Leader that, to the very end, we will devote ourselves to serving the people and advancing Iran,” he added.

The officials were responding to Ayatollah Khamenei’s Friday message marking Government Week, in which the Leader identified the preservation of national unity and social cohesion as a fundamental matter.

“Undoubtedly, every discouraging statement that weakens national and public motivation, and every kind of imagined dichotomy — such as war or negotiations, consensus or extremism, compromise or warmongering — which in the past inflicted direct or indirect harm on our dear people, can have the same effect from now on,” the Leader said.

“Therefore, I firmly declare that committing any act that harms social cohesion is prohibited,” Ayatollah Khamenei stressed.

His remarks also addressed the need to tackle economic and livelihood challenges, including inflation, while increasing domestic production and eliminating the US dollar in transactions.

“The key to resolving all these matters in this field lies in relying as much as possible on domestic production,” he said, adding that imports should be used properly and wisely where sufficient domestic production does not exist.

In his message, Ayatollah Khamenei praised the administration of President Masoud Pezeshkian for addressing the people’s needs amid US-Israeli aggression and blockade.

The Government Week is held annually to commemorate President Mohammad Ali Rajai and Prime Minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar, who were martyred in the bombing of the prime minister’s office on August 30, 1981.

Iran is the last bastion of true anti-imperial resistance, owes no one an explanation: Writer

By Press TV Website Staff

Palestinian-American writer and activist Susan Abulhawa says the Islamic Republic of Iran is “the last bastion of true anti-imperial resistance,” rejecting the open letter published in The Guardian critical of Iran.

In an interview with the Press TV website, Abulhawa denounced the letter and its signatories for creating false equivalences and downplaying the scale of the US-Israeli aggression against Iran.

The letter published in The Guardian on Thursday and signed by a group of noted intellectuals and activists has been widely criticized for placing Iran’s political prisoners, Israel’s detention of innocent Palestinians and the brutal US immigration detention system within a single framework of “carceral states,” while calling for opposition to both imperialism and what it describes as “hollow anti-imperialism.”

For Abulhawa, the letter’s framing fundamentally misrepresents the reality facing the Islamic Republic.

At the moment, she said, when the country is under sustained US-Israeli aggression, criticism of Iran’s domestic political system cannot be detached from the vastly unequal forces confronting the country or from decades of unilateral and illegal sanctions, “regime change” campaigns, covert operations, assassinations and other forms of Western and Israeli interventionist policies.

Abulhawa took particular issue with the letter’s description of Iranian political prisoners as being caught “between two blades of a scissors,” noting that the metaphor obscures a profound asymmetry between Iran and the powers waging war against it.

She also rejected a false equivalence between Iran’s prisons, Israel’s detention of Palestinians and the US immigration detention system, saying that the three involve fundamentally different political, legal and historical circumstances.

And she also questioned the letter’s use of the phrase “hollow anti-imperialism,” asking why Iran’s resistance to Western pressure and its insistence on sovereignty should be characterized in such terms.

In Abulhawa’s view, Iran’s struggle cannot be understood through a framework that places an anti-imperialist state under military attack on the same political and moral footing as the imperial powers attacking it.

‘Two blades of the same scissors?’

Abulhawa said she is struggling to reconcile her instinctive reaction to the letter with the respect she holds for many of its signatories, whom she described as individuals who have “dedicated their lives to Black liberation and anti-colonial struggles.”

“Prominent intellectuals in the imperial core are using their voice at this hour primarily to criticize a government under active bombardment. While I believe that no government is beyond reproach or criticism, I have a lot of questions and cautions about this open letter,” she told the Press TV website.

A central concern for Abulhawa is the letter’s description of Iranian political prisoners as being trapped “between two blades of a scissors” — the Islamic Republic on one side and the United States and the Israeli regime on the other.

She rejected the implication that the two sides could be understood as equivalent, saying that the comparison fails to account for the vastly different levels of political, military and economic power involved.

“The overall framing is of two equally opposing sides—two blades of the same scissors,” Abulhawa said. “This is a wholly unfair representation of what is in reality a profound asymmetry of power.”

On one side, she said, stands “a country that has been subjected to crippling, decades-long economic sanctions, now fighting an existential anti-imperial struggle kinetically.”

On the other, she pointed to “a nuclear, AI-powered empire, with its inexhaustible money, munitions, supply lines, coalitions, surveillance, and near-total grip on international political, legal, information, and economic infrastructure.”

Abulhawa noted that the letter appears to minimize the severity of the war on Iran, which legal experts have unanimously described as illegal.

“What the letter describes as ‘current, indiscriminate waves of US-Israeli military assaults’ undersells what’s actually happening in the ‘six months into a war,’” she told the Press TV website.

She then pointed to a series of attacks and assassinations that demonstrate the scale and history of the confrontation, including “the unprovoked Tomahawk missile and B-2 bomber attacks targeting [Shajareh Tayyebeh] Elementary School in [Minab, southern Hormozgan province], which killed 180 children and teachers.”

She also cited attacks that led to the martyrdom of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, and his family, as well as more than a third of the country’s political, military and scientific leadership.

Abulhawa further pointed to attacks on “civilian infrastructure, including water systems, farmlands, electric grids and power plants, as well as [the Dena destroyer,] an unarmed Iranian navy ship carrying young cadets returning from a peacetime maritime exercise in international waters.”

She noted that these events must also be viewed against decades of attacks against Iran that had gone unanswered by Tehran.

She cited Israel’s repeated assassinations of Iranian scientists, the assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani, strikes against Iranian military generals in Syria, the attack on Iran’s consulate in Damascus, and the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, chief of the Gaza-based resistance movement Hamas, on Iranian soil.

She also referred to the 1988 US downing of Iran Air Flight 655, which killed 290 passengers and crew members, including 66 children, as well as “endless cyber-attacks, covert and overt naval sabotage and so much more.”

“All of it without response from Tehran,” she said.

‘A false equivalence’

The noted writer and poet said placing the prison systems of Iran, the US and the Israeli regime within a single “carceral” framework risks obscuring fundamentally different political, historical and legal circumstances.

“There are currently 2 million incarcerated people in the United States, the largest prison population anywhere on earth,” she said, citing estimates that 4-6 percent of those prisoners may be innocent.

“That’s 80,000-120,000, about two NFL stadiums full of innocent lives behind bars,” she added..

She also rejected a “false equivalence” between Iranian prisons and Israel’s detention of Palestinians and inhumane conditions inside Israeli prisons.

“I would also argue that comparing Iran’s prisons with Israel’s decades-long, systematic, colonial detention of indigenous Palestinians is another form of false equivalence,” she told the Press TV website.

“So is the comparison with America’s ICE detentions, separation of families and loss of children in the process who are most likely trafficked.”

Abulhawa highlighted that it was not fair to place Iran, which she characterized as a “revolutionary government” only a few decades removed from West-backed colonial rule and still subject to sanctions, in the same “carceral” category as “two settler colonial states.”

“One cannot ignore the enormous disparity of political, military, and historical circumstances,” she said.

She also emphasized the different legal relationships involved.

According to Abulhawa, people held in Iranian jails are “overwhelmingly Iranian citizens, prosecuted under the state’s own criminal and national security laws.”

Palestinians held in Israeli administrative detention, by contrast, are “non-citizen subjects of a military occupation, detained and re-detained indefinitely under military decrees without charge or trial.”

Those held in US immigration detention represent another category: “non-citizens held under civil immigration laws pending removal proceedings with access to immigration courts, however corrupt they may be.”

“These are three distinct legal relationships—1) a state and its own citizens; 2) a state and migrants crossing its borders; and 3) an occupying power and a stateless occupied indigenous population,” Abulhawa said.

In her view, the letter collapses these distinctions into a single concept of “carceral states everywhere,” producing a “rhetorical equivalence” that is not supported by the underlying political realities.

It treats “administrative detention,” “political imprisonment,” and “immigration detention” as though the political stakes were the same, she said, while overlooking the fundamentally different questions of sovereignty, citizenship and self-determination involved.

Security threats, foreign interference and prosecutions

Another concern raised by Abulhawa was the letter’s failure to identify who the prisoners are or why they were arrested.

She explained that without this information, the letter does not engage with what Iranian authorities describe as security threats, foreign interference, terrorism and espionage.

“The letter does not identify who the prisoners are or why they were arrested,” she said.

“In neglecting to do so, there is no engagement with the very real security threats, proven foreign interference, terrorism, and espionage, which Iranian authorities cite as reasons for some arrests and prosecutions.”

She noted that many of those who were arrested by Iranian authorities confessed to working with the Israeli spy agency Mossad.

She also referred to a recent case involving people imprisoned after “gruesomely disemboweling a young reciter of the Quran.”

What does ‘hollow anti-imperialism’ mean?

The phrase “hollow anti-imperialism” used in the letter has been widely scrutinized. The letter says its signatories reject what it calls a “false binary of imperialism and hollow anti-imperialism.”

Abulhawa questioned both the wording and the political implications of the phrase

“The phrase that knocked me off balance was this: ‘...we reject the false binary of imperialism and hollow anti-imperialism,’” she said.

She noted that anti-imperialist writer Carlos Martinez had addressed the wording in a recent post, describing it as the “load-bearing phrase” of the letter.

“Indeed, it does so much heavy lifting,” Abulhawa said, questioning why the word “hollow” had been inserted. “It’s so clearly deliberate, but why?”

For Abulhawa, the term is especially difficult to reconcile with Iran’s insistence on sovereignty in the face of sustained Western pressure.

“How can Iran’s insistence on sovereignty and dignity be called ‘hollow,’ despite the grave and terrible cost to themselves?” she asked.

She noted that Iran could have chosen a less confrontational path and aligned itself with the dominant regional order.

“They could have taken the easy path a long time ago and bowed to empire, as some of their Arab neighbors have done,” she said.

Instead, she said, Iran has chosen “self-possession and loyalty to their ancestors and children.”

“That can be called many things, but hollow is not one of them,” Abulhawa said, pointing out that Iran should not be expected to justify its resistance to external powers.

“Iran owes no one an explanation,” she said.The Islamic Republic is the last bastion of true anti-imperial resistance, and the whole world is rooting for them.”

A response to The Guardian’s open letter: Opposing the war on Iran means rejecting war propaganda

By Carlos Martinez

The Guardian has published an open letter to Iran’s “political prisoners,” signed by Angela Davis, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Rashid Khalidi, Robin DG Kelley, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Judith Butler, and Walden Bello, among others (although Kelley has since withdrawn his signature, and there is considerable doubt that Mumia Abu-Jamal knowingly lent his name to the venture).

These are not people to be dismissed lightly. Many have made important contributions to the anti-imperialist and Black liberation movements, and one of them is currently writing from within a US prison. Nevertheless, the letter is wrong and serves an objectively harmful purpose.

The central metaphor employed is that of “the two blades of a scissors”: the Islamic Republic on one side, and the United States and Israel on the other, with the Iranian people being crushed between them. Such an image manufactures symmetry between the perpetrators of an ongoing criminal war of aggression and the victim of that war; between the warmongering Epstein coalition and an independent country with no record of invading anyone.

The signatories justify their position by “rejecting the false binary of imperialism and hollow anti-imperialism”. But how hollow, exactly, is Tehran’s anti-imperialism?

Iran: An anti-imperialist state

For four decades, while almost every Arab government made its accommodation with Washington and Tel Aviv, Iran armed, funded and provided diplomatic support to the Palestinian resistance. When the Abraham Accords put enormous inducements on the table – security guarantees, investment, technology, the lifting of pressure – Iran refused normalisation. As a matter of principle, it has consistently declined to recognise the legitimacy of an entity built on apartheid and ethnic cleansing.

Iran has paid a significant price for that principled stance: four decades of sanctions designed to strangle its development; the assassination of its scientists; the sabotage of its infrastructure; endless covert operations; and now a full-scale war in which an estimated 3,500 Iranian civilians have lost their lives, and schools, hospitals, apartment blocks, bridges, ports and oil depots have been bombed.

Tehran’s stance against the Empire has not been limited to Palestine. For example, under the West-backed Pahlavi dictatorship, Iran was a close ally of apartheid South Africa and a reliable supplier of its oil. After 1979, the Islamic Republic severed those relations and backed the liberation struggle, at a time when Washington and London still classified the African National Congress as a terrorist organisation.

In 1992, two years after his release from prison, Nelson Mandela travelled to Tehran to thank Iran for its support, referring to Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei as “my leader”. Apparently, Mandela did not find Iran’s anti-imperialism hollow.

Today Iran stands with Cuba as it faces a genocidal energy siege. It stands with Venezuela, which has suffered the kidnapping of its president and the theft of its oil resources. It stands with Yemen and with the resistance forces of Lebanon and Iraq – the only regional actors working systematically to block US hegemonism and Israeli expansionism.

Iran is a member of BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), and a crucial link in the Belt and Road Initiative – which is to say, Iran is part of the emerging multipolar trajectory that constitutes the actually existing opposition to the unipolar world order dominated by Washington and its allies.

“Hollow anti-imperialism” – as the open letter refers to – is a communiqué and a hashtag – or perhaps an open letter. Iran’s anti-imperialism has been measured in blood.

Propaganda war

The letter published by The Guardian sadly parrots tired tropes about an “evil regime” which “from its inception enforced absolute social and political control based on an exclusionary ideology”. No mention of the fact that this “exclusionary ideology” received the support of over 98 percent of the Iranian electorate in a referendum held in 1979, following a revolution against the absolute social and political control of the US-aligned Pahlavi regime.

No mention of the fact that many of the leaders of the revolution had themselves been imprisoned and tortured by the Shah’s machinery of repression. And no mention of the Iranian people’s impressive achievements since 1979.

Before 1979, roughly half of Iranians could not read or write; literacy now exceeds 90 percent and is near universal among the young. Women, once largely excluded from education, now make up the majority of students in Iranian higher education.

A country under one of the harshest sanctions regimes in history has built itself into a scientific, technological and military power capable of absorbing the combined weight of the United States and Israel and emerging with its sovereignty intact.

By painting the Islamic Republic as an “evil regime”, the letter erases the reality of the Iranian people’s achievements and the popular support for their government. Such a narrative undermines solidarity with a country under attack; it legitimises imperialism and delegitimises resistance. This is the real hollow anti-imperialism.

Where do we stand?

One can disagree with various aspects of Iran’s domestic politics. The question at hand is different: where do we stand in the global struggle against imperialism? Which side of the barricade are we on? Do we support a criminal war of aggression, or the resistance to it? Do we support the genocide in Gaza, or the country that has been the Palestinian resistance’s most consistent state ally for nearly half a century?

The letter dissolves the distinction. It asks us to refuse the choice. But in a war of aggression there is no third position available, because only one party benefits from your neutrality, and it is not the party being bombed.

The timing is also significant. The letter appears in a British newspaper, six months into a US-Israeli war, at the precise moment when Washington cannot win militarily and needs the political terrain softened.

It recycles a familiar vocabulary – sham trials, systematic torture, the targeting of minorities – largely without sourcing, in the genre that has preceded and accompanied every “regime-change” war of the past three decades, from Yugoslavia to Syria. Whatever the signatories intended, that is the function it will serve.

The lesson they taught us

Angela Davis was imprisoned by a state that told the world she was a terrorist. Mumia Abu-Jamal is imprisoned by that same state today – a state which, incidentally, holds more people in prison than any other country on earth.

These are people who know precisely what happens when an empire manufactures the moral case for crushing its enemies, because it manufactured the case against them.

They would not have signed, half a century ago, a letter denouncing both blades of a scissors – COINTELPRO on one side and the Black Panther Party on the other.

They would have recognised what such a letter was for.

The duty of progressive and anti-war forces is not complicated. It is to oppose the war, the sanctions, the assassinations and the “regime-change” operation, and to assert that a country defending its sovereignty against the most powerful military on earth deserves our solidarity.

Matters concerning Iran’s domestic politics can be settled afterwards, by Iranians themselves, in an Iran that has preserved its independence.

Carlos Martinez is a writer, analyst, activist, anti-imperialist and author of 'The East is Still Red – Chinese Socialism in the 21st Century'.

Rising US bond yields, $40 trillion debt and looming economic crisis amid war on Iran

Y. P. Rāzi

These days, we hear a great deal about the rising yield on US Treasury bonds. This issue has caused grave concern among American officials to the point that, under the direct order of President Donald Trump to the White House economic team, the administration has resorted to financial engineering to prevent the country from sinking further into this endless quagmire.

To finance its annual budget deficit, the US government is authorized to sell bonds, provided it adheres to the debt ceiling limit set by Congress. These bonds are mostly offered with a fixed interest rate, meaning that bondholders receive a predetermined fixed payment every six months.

The primary domestic buyers of these bonds are investment and pension funds, the Federal Reserve, and primary dealers (which consist of 25 major Wall Street banks selected by the Federal Reserve). Domestic investors hold roughly twice as much US debt as foreign investors. 

However, it is important to note that since 2022, the Federal Reserve has not only stopped purchasing new bonds but has also begun selling off its existing holdings, a policy known as quantitative tightening. The largest foreign holders of US debt include Japan, the United Kingdom, China, and others.

But if most of the bonds issued by the Treasury offer fixed interest rates, why do shifting political and economic conditions have such a dramatic impact on their effective yield? The answer lies in the secondary market. 

The primary buyers, mostly domestic institutions, often sell these bonds to finance their own expenses, creating a vibrant secondary market. When investors are optimistic about future inflation and economic conditions, demand for bonds rises, driving up their market price. This, in turn, lowers the effective yield. 

Conversely, when expectations point to a bleak future with high inflation, demand drops and buyers bid lower prices, sometimes even below the original purchase price, which pushes the yield upward.

To illustrate this, consider a bond with a face value of $1,000 and an annual fixed interest payment of $50. Its effective yield is 5%. However, if demand weakens and the same bond trades at just $800 in the secondary market, while the $50 annual payout remains unchanged, the effective yield rises to 6.25% (800 ÷ 50 = 6.25%). 

The main drivers behind this rising yield (i.e., falling demand) are fears of persistent inflation, concerns over the government's ability to repay its mounting debt, and the growing appeal of competing markets, such as corporate stocks.

What are the consequences of this rising yield for the US government?

First, it causes a staggering increase in borrowing costs. The government will be forced to offer higher interest rates on future bond issuances to attract buyers.

Second, it adds immense pressure to America’s already massive $40 trillion national debt. The government is already paying enormous sums in interest to bondholders. Imagine the crushing burden that even a one-percentage-point hike in rates would impose on the Treasury.

Third, it effectively paralyzes the federal budget. Interest payments on the national debt have already surpassed the entire defense budget. Now imagine the government not only having to service old debt but also having to roll it over at new, higher rates when it matures. This leaves virtually no room for essential public services.

Fourth, it severely limits the government's fiscal maneuverability for subsidizing essential goods or funding infrastructure projects.

Fifth, it undermines US creditworthiness, sowing doubt among bondholders about whether a government drowning in debt can ever repay its obligations. This growing fear only drives investors to demand even higher yields for lending to the US; a vicious cycle that feeds on itself. 

If this trend escalates to the point where major countries or sovereign wealth funds refuse to buy US bonds due to elevated credit risk, it would trigger a full-blown financial catastrophe for the United States. 

What will be the effects if this situation continues?

In the short term (6 months to 1 year):

1.  The most immediate pain for ordinary Americans will come from higher mortgage and auto loan rates. A household that paid $2,000 per month on their home loan may soon face payments of $2,200 or $2,300: a direct hit to their purchasing power.

2.  With bond yields rising, major investors sell off stocks to buy bonds, triggering red trading sessions on Wall Street. Retirees with pension funds tied to stock market performance will suffer serious losses.

3.  As banks face higher funding costs, they will extend more expensive credit to businesses. Corporations will then postpone investments and freeze hiring. 

In the medium term (1 to 3 years):

1.  Stagflation will take hold. High borrowing costs reduce consumer spending, leading to slower business activity. At the same time, energy and raw material costs remain elevated, forcing producers to pass these costs onto consumers; further worsening price pressures. Taming this combination will be extremely difficult for the government.

2.  With the federal government under mounting fiscal stress, deep budget cuts will be inevitable. Money for infrastructure projects and public investments will simply vanish.

3.  Unemployment will rise. As firms shelve projects, new hiring will stall, and widespread layoffs will likely follow.

In the long term (3 to 10 years and beyond):

1.  Economic growth will decelerate sharply. Instead of investing in advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence or biotechnology, the government will be forced to channel its revenues into servicing its debt. The decline in GDP growth will lead to a prolonged, chronic recession.

2.  The US dollar’s status as the world’s primary reserve currency will be eroded. When foreign investors see the US debt spiral and the value of their assets shrinking, they will begin offloading US bonds in favor of gold or the yuan. This will cause a steep decline in the dollar’s value, reducing America’s purchasing power, curtailing imports, and fueling domestic inflation.

3.  Inequality will intensify. Wealthy American investors will profit from buying discounted bonds with high yields, while the middle and lower classes will bear the brunt of the economic pain. This widening gap could trigger social unrest and political instability. 

The war on Iran

In reality, US bond yields remained exceptionally low between 2008 and 2022, largely due to expansionary monetary policies. However, in 2022, surging inflation and the Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate hikes pushed yields sharply upward. 

Today, the 10-year Treasury yield fluctuates between 4.65% and 4.75%, while the 30-year yield ranges from 5.21% to 5.33%. This stands in stark contrast to 2020, when yields hit a historic low of just 0.52%.

The bond yield is just one of many barometers of a nation’s economic health. Yet, by examining this single indicator alone, we can better understand why many economic experts view the ongoing war against Iran, launched during this economically bleak period, as one of the biggest strategic blunders not just of Trump, but of any US administration. 

America launched this unprovoked and illegal war with its national debt already exceeding $40 trillion. History shows that the war on Vietnam, war on Iraq, and even the war on Afghanistan inflicted severe inflationary pressures and deepened debt crises on the US economy. Now, imagine waging war against a vastly different and strategically resilient adversary while carrying that level of debt.

Many analysts argue that America’s immense military power has long been the backbone of its economic strength. But a staggering military failure against Iran, a nation that has endured some of the harshest sanctions for nearly half a century, would dramatically undermine the credibility of the US armed forces and, by extension, confidence in the American-led global order. 

All of this would inevitably accelerate the decline in trust in the US dollar. Pay no heed to Trump’s promotional posts on Truth Social; the economic data speaks for itself. It is the United States that needs peace with Iran, not the other way around.

Y. P. Rāzi is a Tehran-based senior journalist and political commentator.

Without a binding ‘no aggression, no threat’ US guarantee, no war-ending deal with Iran can make headway

By Press TV Strategic Analysis Desk

In the aftermath of the 40-day Ramadan War – the unprovoked and illegal joint US-Israeli aggression against Iran from February 28 to April 8, 2026 – both sides, with Pakistani mediation, discussed the contours of a potential agreement to end the third imposed war.

A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed in Islamabad, outlining a framework for ending US-Israeli hostilities on all fronts, lifting illegal and draconian US sanctions, withdrawing US occupation forces from Iran’s periphery, and addressing other outstanding issues.

On paper, the document promised a comprehensive ceasefire on all fronts, the dismantling of US military infrastructure in the region, and a multibillion-dollar reconstruction package.

Yet, as the 60-day window for final negotiations has expired, the prospect of sustainable peace has grown perilously fragile, primarily because the American side has so far refused to honor its commitments, which, in effect, amount to an acknowledgment of its defeat in the war and growing desperation over the losses it has suffered.

Iran has maintained that any war-ending deal that does not provide for a definitive end to all acts of aggression against Iran and its allies in the region, as well as ironclad guarantees against any future acts of aggression or threats, is destined to fail.

Lesson of war: Security cannot be negotiated under fire

The Ramadan War left more than 3,500 Iranian civilians martyred, including over 270 schoolchildren. The ghastly terrorist attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' school in Minab, where over 168 students were killed on the first day of the war, became a symbol of the brutality of the unprovoked and unjustified aggression.

In the words of Iranian officials, this atrocity "cannot be justified even by the most barbaric standards." The war demonstrated, in the starkest terms, that the United States and its allies are willing to strike anywhere, at any time, to accomplish their sinister objectives.

That the US war machine failed to achieve any of its stated objectives, suffered catastrophic human and material losses, and was ultimately forced to propose a ceasefire through Pakistani mediators is another matter entirely.

For Tehran, this experience crystallized a strategic insight: any war-ending deal without sufficient security guarantees is not enough. The MoU may have promised an end to “military operations,” but within weeks of its signing, US forces struck Iranian vessels near the Strait of Hormuz and carried out a series of airstrikes on civilian areas in southern Iran.

Iranian armed forces also retaliated against US assets across the region, warning that it reserves the "legitimate and definitive" right to respond to any ceasefire violation.

This pattern – ceasefires followed by renewed aggression – is not an anomaly. It reflects a deeper problem, which is that the United States has treated negotiations as a tool to manage war rather than resolve it. Any military escalation reinforces concerns that Washington could once again violate or withdraw from future deals, as it previously did with the nuclear deal.

Hence, without binding and enforceable guarantees against future aggression, any deal is merely a pause in hostilities, a lull before the storm. The United States and its allies must commit that Iran's land, sea, and air borders will not be violated, and that the territory or bases of regional countries will not be used for military aggression against the Islamic Republic.

The integrated security vision: A war on one front is a war on all

To understand why Iran insists that any peace must address all fronts of aggression – from Lebanon to Yemen, from Iraq to Palestine – one must grasp the logic of the Axis of Resistance. This is not a loose alliance of convenience but a strategic partnership built on mutual interests.

The architecture of this network has been decades in the making. From the establishment of Hezbollah in Lebanon in the 1980s to the integration of Iraqi Hashd al-Shaabi, Yemen's Ansarullah, and Palestinian resistance groups, a multi-front defensive network is in place that operates in coordination but retains independent action capability.

This integration is not merely military but strategic. As Iranian officials have made clear, regional security is an interconnected reality. A separate peace on one front while aggression continues elsewhere is a trap. For Iran, security in the Persian Gulf cannot be separated from security in Lebanon, and security in Lebanon cannot be separated from security in Palestine.

Iran has made its position absolutely clear, and the world would do well to listen. The end of the war against Iran must mean the end of the war on all fronts of the resistance axis. An act of aggression against one component of this axis means an act of aggression against all components, from Iran to Lebanon to Yemen to Iraq and Palestine.

A ceasefire cannot happen in the Persian Gulf while aggression in any form or manifestation against Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq or Yemen continues. It is a strategic doctrine established in clear terms by the Islamic Republic after the recent two US-Israeli-imposed wars.

The United States and Israel have pursued a strategy of fragmentation, seeking to isolate Gaza from Lebanon, separate Ansarullah from Hezbollah, and drive a wedge between Iraq and Iran. The recent war brought the Axis closer together. Instead of fragmenting the resistance, the US-Israeli aggression forged a more cohesive alliance with clearer operational coordination.

The United States has also employed what it calls "diplomatic pressure" on Iraq to disarm its resistance factions, and has carried out false flag attacks in Iraqi Kurdistan. In Lebanon, persistent calls for Hezbollah's disarmament are not expressions of concern for Lebanese stability but a ploy to expose the country to Zionist aggression without resistance. In Yemen, the US-backed Saudi-led coalition has bombed schools, hospitals, and markets while maintaining a crippling blockade. Each of these acts of aggression is a component of a broader campaign to weaken the entire resistance network.

The price of a real peace: Ending all aggression and threats

The MoU signed in Islamabad reflected the recognition that peace requires more than a ceasefire. The document includes provisions for the end of aggression on all fronts, guarantees for non-aggression, removal of illegal US naval blockade, the withdrawal of US occupation forces from the vicinity of Iran, war reparations and the lifting of all sanctions, including UN Security Council resolutions and all unilateral US measures.

Yet, as the final negotiations have stalled, Iran has signaled that it will not wait indefinitely for the United States to meet its commitments. In the event of any fresh aggression, Iran's response will be severe. It has switched from a defensive to an offensive posture.

The problem here is that the United States and Israel have consistently demanded that Iran abandon its allies, dismantle its deterrence, and accept a regional order designed by and for its adversaries. Iran cannot, on one hand, commit to restraint and de-escalation, while on the other, witness the concentration of US naval vessels, fighter jets, bombers, and military infrastructure along its borders and across the region.

From Tehran's perspective, genuine de-escalation must be accompanied by the end of America's threatening military posture and the gradual withdrawal of its forces from around Iran and the region. Foreign military presence must not become a tool for encirclement, intimidation, or laying the groundwork for yet another war.

The way forward: A deal without aggression, threats

A war-ending deal requires more than a piecemeal ceasefire. It requires a definitive end to all acts of aggression against Iran and its allies, backed by enforceable guarantees and a clear mechanism for addressing violations.

It requires the United States to commit, in clear terms, that Iran's land, sea, and air borders will not be violated, and that the territory or bases of regional countries will not be used for military aggression against the Islamic Republic and its people. It requires an end to the strategy of fragmentation and the recognition that a war on one front is a war on all.

The resistance will not be bullied into disarmament and surrender. The Lebanese people will not abandon their Hezbollah allies to face Israeli aggression alone. The Yemeni people will not accept the continuation of a brutal blockade while a ceasefire is negotiated elsewhere.

And the Palestinian people will not accept that their cause is separable from the broader war for regional self-determination. The United States and its allies must ensure that the blockade of Yemen and the military aggression that has spawned a humanitarian catastrophe ends immediately. They must ensure that Israeli aggression against Lebanon ends, and that Hezbollah is not forced to disarm while the Zionist regime remains a threat.

The choice before the United States and its allies is clear. They can continue their policy of aggression, fragmentation, and pressure, in which case the war will continue, not in its current form, but in a cycle of confrontation that will draw in ever more actors and devastate ever more lives.

Or they can choose a genuine deal, one that respects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries in the region, that ends all acts of aggression, and that allows the peoples of the region to determine their own futures without foreign interference.

One of the most important lessons of the war is that any deal without security guarantees is not enough. This guarantee must be accompanied by a clear mechanism for addressing any violation of the deal, because the aggressor cannot hit and simply walk away.

Any war-ending deal that does not include a definitive end to all acts of aggression in the future and a binding commitment against any future threats against Iran and its allies is not a deal that would be acceptable to the people of Iran who have been on the streets for over 160 days now.

The choice is not Iran's alone to make. If the United States and its allies want the war to end and the Strait of Hormuz to reopen, they must ensure that no act of aggression – military, economic, or otherwise – continues against Iran or any member of the resistance axis.

They must provide ironclad guarantees that no future threats will be issued, no future strikes will be carried out, and no future attempts will be made to destabilize the region through force.