Iran International
The second round of Iran–US nuclear talks was met with a muted and often critical reaction in Tehran, where official outlets questioned Washington’s commitment after American negotiators left Geneva within hours despite Iran’s offer to continue discussions.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi nonetheless described the talks as positive overall but cautioned that reaching a final agreement would take time. He said both sides agreed to begin drafting potential agreement texts, exchange documents and schedule a third round.
In Tehran, however, many voices sharply criticized what they portrayed as a lack of seriousness on the American side.
The government’s official daily, Iran, accused Washington of “part-time diplomacy,” arguing that the brief visit by US representatives Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner suggested an oversimplified approach to Tehran’s nuclear file.
“That’s the challenge of negotiating with non-diplomatic figures,” the paper wrote in an editorial, adding that if diplomacy is to replace pressure and tension, it must rely on “a clear and durable decision at the highest political levels.”
‘Side job for businessmen’
Commentators linked the criticism in part to the Americans’ decision to leave Geneva for separate negotiations related to the war in Ukraine, contrasting it with Tehran’s readiness for prolonged talks backed by a large expert team.
Reza Nasri, an analyst close to Iran’s foreign ministry, echoed the criticism on X, writing: “Witkoff and Kushner are treating Geneva like a diplomatic fast-food restaurant… Global stability is not fast food. Serious diplomacy requires focus and real intent, not a side job for businessmen.”
The website Nour News, close to senior security official Ali Shamkhani, also questioned Washington’s priorities in an article titled “Where is the real time-wasting?” It argued that accusations of stalling better applied to the US, which it said relied heavily on media optics and insufficiently specialized envoys.
The diplomatic exchanges unfolded amid heightened rhetoric and military signaling. Ahead of the Geneva meeting, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reiterated his hardline stance, invoking a historical Shiite reference to stress resistance to US pressure.
Tehran media also highlighted an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) naval exercise in the Persian Gulf, describing it as a deterrent message coinciding with nuclear diplomacy.
Iran’s financial markets reacted negatively to the Geneva talks, partly influenced by reports of an increased US military posture in the region. On Wednesday, the Iranian rial weakened again, with the dollar rising nearly 1.2 percent to around 1,630,000 rials.
Risk of talks collapsing
Political analyst Mohammad Soltaninejad cautioned that drafting preliminary texts does not signal a final deal is near.
“Even if agreement is reached on some issues, that does not necessarily mean the US will act accordingly,” he told the news outlet Entekhab.
Soltaninejad said Iran is seeking tangible sanctions relief, while the US may prefer to maintain economic pressure to gain leverage on Tehran’s missile program, raising questions about whether the sides can easily align their economic and security interests.
Another analyst, Mostafa Najafi, said in an online interview that the risk of negotiations collapsing appears higher than scenarios involving even a limited agreement to manage tensions.
Moderate journalist Ahmad Zeidabadi offered a more optimistic assessment, writing on his Telegram channel that the talks still have a chance of success.
He warned, however, that fear of domestic hardliners in Iran or pressure from supporters of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the US could derail a potentially beneficial agreement for both sides.
In Iranian culture, the fortieth day after a death is a solemn threshold. Families and friends traditionally gather at the grave, laying flowers, reciting prayers and receiving visitors – a ritual of grief that is both private and communal, and that often carries religious undertones.
This week, cemeteries were only part of the picture as mourners map memory onto the sites of violence. With so many deaths concentrated in urban centers and around hospitals, intersections and residential streets, memorials have spread outward from cemeteries into the everyday fabric of cities.
Videos sent to Iran International and others circulating on social media show flowers placed not only on graves but on asphalt, sidewalks and hospital entrances – at the very spots where protesters were shot.
In Shiraz, relatives and close friends of Hamidreza Hosseinipour covered the boulevard where he was killed in petals. In Tehran’s Sadeghieh Square, citizens gathered at the traffic circle where demonstrators had been shot, laying flowers in what is normally a site of rush-hour congestion.
In Tehranpars district of the capital, mourners placed flowers and candles outside a hospital where wounded protesters were taken and where some died.
In Mazandaran province, black balloons were released into the sky.
Schools, too, became sites of commemoration. Videos show groups of schoolgirls lighting candles and singing patriotic songs, marking the chehelom inside classrooms rather than in mosques.
The sites of commemoration have widened beyond the places where many Iranians once expected mourning to unfold. Where people believe their loved ones fell, they now leave photographs, flowers or pieces of clothing.
Pavements become shrines. Traffic circles are transformed into temporary altars. Hospital gates turn into gathering points. The geography of grief has changed.
There are simply too many dead, and too many sites tied to their final moments, for remembrance to remain confined to cemetery gates.
Even when ceremonies do take place at graves, the atmosphere captured in recent videos differs sharply from older conventions of public mourning, where religious elegies used to set the tone. Today, music and movement have emerged as ways of carrying grief.
At Behesht Zahra cemetery in Tehran, footage shows families gathering and playing traditional musical instruments. In Najafabad, Isfahan province, mourners applauded and played music.
In Zanjan, kites were sent into the sky above the cemetery as names were read out.
In Shahreza, a video shows a traditional Qashqai dance performed during the fortieth-day memorial for 20-year-old Pouria Jahangiri, killed on January 8.
In Qarchak, near Tehran, mourners clapped in time to songs played for Hamid Nik, a resident who died after being hit during the crackdown. In another video from Najafabad, fireworks illuminate the night as people gather and chant.
In Mashhad, the memorial for Hamid Mahdavi – a firefighter whose act of carrying an injured protester on his back had spread widely online – took place not in silence but amid chants in the street: “For every one person killed, a thousand will rise behind them.”
These moments do not erase grief, they translate it.
The scenes appearing in recent weeks suggest a shift: not away from mourning itself, but away from a single, familiar language of mourning. Music, clapping, balloons released into the sky, kites and dance have become part of the ritual vocabulary.
After decades in which public mourning was steeped in official religious symbolism, the scenes in recent weeks suggest some are shaping something different: a mourning that is national in tone, public in form, and edged with defiance.
The fortieth day has long been a marker of closure in Iranian tradition – a moment when visitors thin out and life, at least outwardly, resumes.
But with flowers now laid on asphalt and candles lit at hospital doors, the boundary between mourning and daily life has blurred. The city itself has become the setting of remembrance – and, for many, the proof of how profoundly the culture of grief is changing.
