Iran says nuclear site attack proved military option is futile
People walk near a mural of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei amid the Iran-Israel conflict, in Tehran, Iran, June 23, 2025
Iran’s foreign minister said last month's attacks on its nuclear facilities proved that military pressure cannot stop its atomic program, warning that only diplomacy can prevent further conflict, in an interview broadcast Saturday.
Speaking on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting, Abbas Araghchi said Iran remains open to a negotiated deal but only if the US “puts aside military ambitions” and compensates for past actions.
“There is no military option to deal with Iran’s nuclear program,” he told CGTN. “There should be only a diplomatic solution.”
He added that Iran is ready to re-engage in talks, but only “when they put aside their military ambitions.”
No clear path back to negotiations
Iranian officials say any future negotiations will require what they describe as fair and balanced terms. Araghchi reiterated that Tehran is willing to share evidence of the peaceful nature of its nuclear program but warned that “real intention” is needed from the other side.
“There should also be a real intention for a win-win solution,” he said. “Our nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, and we are 100% confident in that.”
“We have no problem to share this confidence with anybody else,” he added. “That can happen only through negotiation.”
The comments follow a warning by European powers that UN sanctions could return if Iran does not rejoin negotiations by late August. Tehran has rejected those calls, insisting Washington was the first to walk away from the 2015 nuclear deal and escalate with military action this year.
Iran’s position has hardened in recent weeks, with officials demanding firm guarantees before any new round of talks. Araghchi reiterated that Iran was committed to the original deal and blamed the current crisis on the US withdrawal.
“Everything we saw today is the result of that withdrawal,” he said, referring to the Trump administration’s 2018 exit from the nuclear agreement. “We remain committed to that [deal],” he said, recalling that the original accord was once “celebrated… as an achievement of diplomacy.”
Iran calls Israel ceasefire fragile
Asked about last month's war with Israel, Araghchi said the ceasefire that ended the fighting remains fragile. He added Iran is prepared to respond if it collapses, though it is not seeking further confrontation.
“We didn’t want this war,” he said. “But we were prepared for that.”
Diplomatic prospects between Iran and the West appear increasingly bleak, with Tehran’s political class voicing growing skepticism that a negotiated breakthrough is still possible.
“The hostile posture of the three European powers and the cautious approach of China and Russia—Iran’s tactical partners—have made a return to diplomacy increasingly unlikely,” wrote Etemad columnist Noushin Mahjoub in her July 17 column.
Mahjoub dismissed Beijing’s role as a potential mediator, arguing that Tehran’s own actions—halting cooperation with the IAEA and clinging to hardline red lines—have left diplomacy with “few prospects.”
Former parliamentary foreign relations chief Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh echoed that view.
“The activation of the trigger mechanism means an end to diplomatic relations between Iran and Europe,” he told the moderate daily Etemad. “And countries like China and Russia, facing their own tensions with the US, cannot be effective mediators.”
He pointed to their passivity during the recent 12-day war with Israel and proposed Oman or Qatar as more realistic options—if Iran recommits to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Searching for way out
But with US officials insisting that only direct engagement is acceptable, the question of mediation may already be obsolete.
Iran’s path out of the current crisis likely hinges not on finding the right go-between, but on its own willingness to fundamentally shift course.
Political analyst Hassan Beheshtipour offered a possible framework, arguing that Tehran needs to embrace a strategy that balances deterrence, confidence-building and responsiveness to major powers.
“Iran’s situation has grown more precarious following accusations by three European states that it undermined nuclear safeguards,” he wrote in the moderate daily Arman Melli, calling for a phased “suspension-for-suspension” model.
“Iran would pause enrichment for one year, while the other side progressively lifts sanctions and releases frozen assets. Afterward, Iran would cap enrichment at 67.3%, while retaining technical capability for higher levels,” Beheshtipour proposed.
Iran remains the only non-nuclear state enriching uranium to 60%—a level close to weapons-grade. But Washington appears adamant that no enrichment is acceptable inside Iran.
Window closing
Tehran is left at a familiar but increasingly perilous crossroads.
The Islamic Republic must either relinquish its revolutionary doctrine to avoid punishing sanctions—or brace for deeper isolation that even China and Russia won’t be able to counterbalance.
Abandoning its ideological identity would transform the ruling system beyond recognition. But choosing resistance without compromise would come at a steep cost: greater hardship for ordinary Iranians and a further erosion of state legitimacy.
Tehran’s long-favored third option—stalling, hedging and tactical ambiguity—may no longer be sustainable. The economy may be too fragile, global patience too thin.
Leader’s defiance
President Pezeshkian’s proposed workaround—reviving barter trade with select neighbors—offers little in the way of real relief. It is a dated, impractical system unlikely to serve any party’s long-term interests.
Yet Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei shows no sign of blinking. This week, he reiterated that Iran is prepared for military and diplomatic action but provided no endorsement of diplomacy with adversaries.
Mistrust runs deep, and Khamenei loyalists miss no opportunity to amplify it.
“Decades of experience and US arrogance, aided by its lackey Israel, show that they want to bring misery upon us and erase our glorious history,” former vice president and hardliner Masoud Zaribafan told Khabar Online.
Thirty-one years after the bombing of AMIA, Argentina’s main Jewish community center, victims mourned the dead and officials pointed an accusing hand at Iran just as Tehran's policies are in focus after a war with Israel last month.
At a virtual event hosted by CIJA, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, diplomats, lawmakers and rights advocates marked the anniversary and criticized Tehran.
“That morning I lost three friends of mine... Nunca lo voy a olvidar. I will never forget them,” said Nico Slobinsky, a Jewish Argentine Canadian and survivor of the attack.
“I still remember... and I shake a little bit when I talk about this,” he added.
The 1994 AMIA bombing, which killed 85 and wounded more than 300, remains the deadliest attack in the country's history. An Argentinian prosecutor ordered ten people including several Iranians to stand trial for the attack last month.
Argentinian, US and Israeli authorities have long accused Tehran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of organizing the attack - charges they deny. Iran on Friday again rejected accusations it was involved and urged a search for the real killers.
Former Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird called the Iranian establishment's presence in Canada a “direct and urgent” threat.
“The life of a past elected official is under threat here in Canada today,” Baird said, referring to fellow panelist Irwin Cotler, Canada’s former Justice Minister.
Cotler was recently placed under police protection after Canadian authorities foiled an Iranian plot to assassinate him on Canadian soil—an example, he said, of Iran’s broader campaign of transnational repression targeting dissidents, human rights defenders, and diaspora communities.
A 2023 Global News investigation uncovered more than 700 Islamic Republic-linked associates operating on Canadian soil.
“We cannot forget as we remember tragedy ... we cannot ignore today the massive domestic repression in Iran, which is intensifying as we meet, and which conflates with the transnational repression and assassination,” Cotler said.
"They're not separate issues. There is a nexus between the two, and both regrettably mandate us to combat the culture of impunity.”
'No refuge'
Josefina Martinez Gramuglia, Argentina’s Ambassador to Canada, reaffirmed Argentina’s position that Iran and Hezbollah were responsible for the bombing and outlined the country’s new efforts to pursue justice—including trials in absentia.
“Those who commit acts of terror will find no refuge,” said Ambassador Gramuglia.
Just weeks earlier, on June 26, Argentine federal judge Daniel Rafecas formally ordered that ten people—including several former senior Iranian officials—stand trial in absentia for their alleged roles in the bombing.
Among those charged are Iran’s former intelligence minister Ali Fallahian, former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, former IRGC commander Mohsen Rezaee, former ambassador to Argentina Hadi Soleimanpour, and additional Iranian embassy staff.
The defendants are considered fugitives, many since 2003, and will be tried under a new law passed in February allowing long-term fugitives to face justice even if absent from court.
Argentina’s President Javier Milei has been a vocal diplomatic and rhetorical ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump—both of whom have long clashed with Iran, a feud that has sharply intensified since the 12- day-war.
Argentina, home to Latin America’s largest Jewish community, has seen its case complicated over the years by allegations of cover-ups, shifting judicial leadership, and even political interference.
Israel’s official Farsi-language X account on Friday posted a photo of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei embracing Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of Hezbollah whom Israel assassinated late last year over what appeared to be the ruins of the AMIA site.
"The perpetrators of this crime: one has been dispatched to hell, and the other is hiding in an underground hell," the post said, referring to reports that Iran's Supreme Leader was transferred to a bunker during the Israeli attacks.
Iran, however, has rejected the accusations as baseless.
In a statement released on Friday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry said the charges against its citizens lack credibility and accused Argentina of politicizing the case under pressure from Israel and third-party actors.
“Iran has called for the real masterminds and perpetrators of the explosion to be identified,” the statement read, adding that the Islamic Republic reserves the right to respond to “any inappropriate and unreasonable action” taken against its citizens.
Iran's ministry also criticized what it called a “show trial,” and urged Argentina to uphold principles of transparency, fairness, and independence in its judicial proceedings.
While Tehran continues to deny involvement, the panelists at the CIJA event argued that justice—though delayed—must not be denied.
For them, the AMIA bombing is more than a tragic memory. It is a warning about the enduring threat posed by the Iranian government—one they say must be confronted, in courtrooms, in policy, and in public awareness.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Friday doubled down on assertions by the Trump administration that US attacks on three Iranian nuclear sites had obliterated Tehran's nuclear capabilities, saying the results were ever clearer.
"The more we report and the more we see, the more we understand how devastating those attacks were on all three of those nuclear sites," Hegseth told Pentagon pool reporters on Friday.
US attacks on June 22 hit Iran's nuclear sites of Fordow, Esfahan and Natanz.
Hegseth's remarks come after a report by NBC News on Thursday citing current and former US officials saying just one of the three nuclear facilities struck by the US in Iran last month has been destroyed.
That assessment, which showed that Fordow was set back as long as two years, was briefed to US lawmakers, Defense Department officials and allied countries in recent days.
An initial Pentagon assessment suggested the attacks had only set Iran's nuclear program back by months, but subsequent analysis released by the Central Intelligence Agency said it would take Tehran years to recover.
Trump on Wednesday said Iran's nuclear program had been dealt an irreparable blow by the US attacks and that he was in no rush to resume negotiations with Tehran despite its alleged eagerness.
A festival organized by Iran's US-sanctioned stated broadcaster has brought American, European and other international journalists and activists to Iran where they expressed solidarity with the Islamic Republic following a 12-day war with Israel.
The four-day event, held from July 17 to 21 under the slogan "Condemnation of Terrorism Against Media," is hosted by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), whose headquarters was bombed by Israel during its military assault on Iran.
American journalists and activists including Calla Walsh and Jennifer Koonings appear in videos and photos shared on the festival’s official X account, in which they voice support for Iran and criticize US foreign policy.
“Living in the United States, we’re constantly fed negative propaganda about places like Iran, portraying them as evil. But it’s so ridiculous that if you have two functioning brain cells, you know none of it is true," said New York-based journalist Koonings, speaking in front of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) drone.
"The US empire is the most criminal and evil entity on the planet,” she added.
Both IRIB and the IRGC are on the United States sanctions list.
“It is the greatest honor of my life to be visiting the Islamic Republic of Iran right now, at this moment, while it is under genocidal siege by the United States and the Zionist entity,” said Boston-based activist Calla Walsh, standing at the IRGC aerospace expo, with missiles in the background.
Iran's outreach to radical influencers
Jason Brodsky, the policy director of the US-based advocacy group UANI, says the Revolutionary Guards and Iranian intelligence services "have experience using conferences or junkets as a recruitment lure for Americans on the far left and right."
Entities like Sobh Festival are "trying to make inroads with radical US-based influencers and those individuals... with whom Iran's regime feels an ideological comradery," Brodsky said on X, urging the US policymakers and law enforcement to be vigilant.
The US state department this week launched a campaign urging US citizens not to visit Iran. Nationals from Britain, France and Germany among others are currently in Iranian detention, in moves condemned by their governments.
Other festival participants include activists, filmmakers, and journalists from the UK, Spain, Germany, Canada, Venezuela, and Brazil.
Attendees have been taken to locations attacked during Israel’s 12-day campaign.
In another video posted on X, German filmmaker Andreas Landeck is shown speaking through a translator. A male voice asks in Persian, “What are you seeing through your lens about these crimes?" to which Landeck responds: “I tried to find the personal belongings.”
Iran continues to be ranked among the world’s worst countries for press freedom.
According to Reporters Without Borders, “Iran has reinforced its position as one of the most repressive countries in terms of press freedom, with journalists and independent media constantly persecuted through arbitrary arrests and harsh sentences handed down after unfair trials before revolutionary courts.”
Two female journalists who covered the 2022 death of a young woman named Mahsa Amini in morality police custody spent 17 months in prison.
Amini’s death sparked widespread protests across Iran and drew international condemnation. The unrest and media coverage of them was violently quashed.
The European Union has proposed to Iran an extension to a deadline for invoking renewed United Nations sanctions, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, as nuclear diplomacy appears to gain pace following a 12-day Mideast war last month.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi spoke with his counterparts from Britain, France and Germany, along with the EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas on Thursday.
During the call, Kallas offered an extension of the snapback deadline under the nuclear deal, Wall Street Journal reporter Laurence Norman wrote on X citing sources, provided Iran resume cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and place specific limits on its enriched uranium stockpile.
Germany’s foreign minister, however, struck a tougher tone on Friday, vowing to trigger the snapback mechanism if no deal is reached by the end of summer.
"We are firmly determined, firstly, to do everything possible to achieve a negotiated diplomatic solution (on Iran nuclear program), but secondly, we are equally determined, if that fails, to activate the snapback mechanism," Johann Wadephul said.
Axios reported on Friday that senior diplomats from Iran and the three European countries are scheduled to meet next week, possibly in Vienna or Geneva.
Iran is expected to be represented by Deputy Foreign Ministers Kazem Gharibabadi and Majid Takht Ravanchi, the report added citing a source with knowledge of the matter.
Iran is reviewing a request from the three European countries to resume nuclear talks, the IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News reported citing sources. However, the time and venue for the potential talks have yet to be determined, the report added.
Tasnim confirmed the talks are expected to be held at the level of deputy foreign ministers.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the offer to extend the snapback deadline is a one-off proposal and any extension would depend on China and Russia at the UN Security Council.
“Iran was non-committal in response,” Norman said.
Under UN Security Council Resolution 2231, any party to a now lapsed 2015 nuclear agreement, including France, Germany, Britain, Russia or China—can file a complaint accusing Iran of non-compliance.
If no agreement is reached within 30 days to maintain sanctions relief, all previous UN sanctions would automatically “snap back,” including arms embargoes, cargo inspections and missile restrictions.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson on Monday criticized the possibility of a snapback triggered by Europe, warning that “Iran will deliver a proportionate and appropriate response if European parties move to re-activate the UN snapback mechanism.”
