Iran International
Any effort to end the Iran war faces a fundamental obstacle even after the resumption of US-Iran diplomacy in New York: apparent divisions within Tehran over who has the authority to negotiate and how far those negotiations can go.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian devoted both the opening and closing sections of his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday to rejecting President Donald Trump's accusations against Tehran.
He also made clear that while Iran welcomed negotiations, it would not yield to coercion or what he described as Trump's “bullying.”
The tension between those two messages reflects the difficult political terrain surrounding the latest diplomatic opening. Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi have signaled a willingness to pursue talks, but criticism from hardliners has raised questions about how much room they have to negotiate.
Those divisions surfaced after Araghchi's contact with US envoy Steve Witkoff in New York on Tuesday.
The IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News Agency reported Wednesday that the contact had taken place without authorization from Iran's policymaking bodies, including the Supreme National Security Council.
Citing Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the council, Tasnim said the approved plan had been limited to conveying Iran's seven conditions through mediators. It described Araghchi's reported interaction with Witkoff as a “major error” and called on the foreign minister to explain his actions.
The criticism points to a potentially important fault line in Tehran: not necessarily over whether diplomacy should continue, but over how direct that diplomacy is permitted to become.
Accounts of Tuesday's discussions have themselves differed. US officials have described a three-hour diplomatic exchange positively, while Iranian accounts have emphasized the role of mediators and said Tehran's conditions were conveyed to Washington.
An Iranian diplomat told Reuters before Pezeshkian's speech that discussions on ending hostilities could continue in New York and described the General Assembly as “a golden opportunity for America to return to diplomacy.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said any agreement would require sustained work over time and that Trump retained military options.
Rubio also pointed to divisions within Tehran, saying potential agreements had repeatedly faltered after being referred back to the country's revolutionary establishment. He blamed the IRGC for the collapse of an earlier US-Iran understanding after it attacked ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
Hardliners test the limits
Despite Tasnim's criticism of Araghchi, some hardline messaging immediately before and during the New York talks appeared to leave room for diplomacy.
Before opposition to the talks became more vocal, even the hardline Kayhan newspaper sounded unusually supportive of Pezeshkian on Wednesday morning.
IRGC spokesman Hossein Mohebbi also delivered a dual message following reports of the talks.
“We don't reject diplomacy, but we impose our own conditions. Our defensive power will be proven in the field,” he was quoted as saying.
The formulation suggested that the IRGC was not rejecting negotiations outright, even while insisting that diplomacy take place on Tehran's terms and alongside continued military pressure.
The dispute over Araghchi's contact with Witkoff suggests the argument may therefore be less about whether Iran should negotiate than about the format, limits and authorization of those negotiations.
Pezeshkian's own language at the United Nations appeared designed to preserve that room while demonstrating that negotiations would not amount to capitulation.
Responding to Trump's rhetoric, he warned the United States, Israel and regional actors that Iran would respond forcefully to threats, while insisting that Tehran still believed in diplomacy.
Major General Ali Abdollahi, chief of staff of Iran's Armed Forces, similarly argued that “rhetoric doesn't change the power calculus” and described Trump's remarks as “a sign of desperation” on the US side.
The sequencing problem
The mediation channel has so far allowed the two sides to exchange complex proposals without requiring the politically riskier spectacle of a meeting between Trump and Pezeshkian.
But even if Tehran's internal disagreements can be contained, substantial differences remain over what each side must do first.
Washington is reportedly insisting on the clearance of maritime choke points and assurances related to Iran's nuclear program before easing its naval blockade.
Tehran, by contrast, is demanding an immediate end to US interdictions and the release of $24 billion in frozen foreign assets as conditions for further progress, according to a source close to the Iranian diplomatic team.
Iran has also linked progress in negotiations to reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
The diplomatic opening in New York therefore leaves two related questions unresolved: whether Washington and Tehran can agree on the sequence of steps needed to end the conflict, and whether Iran's diplomats have sufficient authority at home to deliver whatever they negotiate.
The reaction from the IRGC and other hardline institutions in the coming days may provide an early indication of the answer.
Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi said Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei’s decision to leave the government’s “hands open” in negotiations reflected significant strategic judgment.
“If the Supreme Leader has deemed it expedient and left the government’s hands open in the negotiations, that is an important act of prudence,” Safavi said in a televised interview.
He also pointed to coordination between Iran’s military and political leadership and said he hoped decisions by the Supreme National Security Council would help prevent another war.
The remarks provided rare public confirmation from a senior military figure that Pezeshkian’s government has the leadership’s approval to pursue negotiations. They followed a day of indirect exchanges between Iranian and US delegations in New York, though major differences remain over Washington’s naval blockade and Tehran’s conditions for ending the conflict.
The prospect of diplomacy also exposed competing views inside Iran over how far Pezeshkian should go.
Lawmaker Ebrahim Rezaei and the IRGC-affiliated Tasnim and Fars news agencies criticized Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s meeting with US envoy Steve Witkoff. Rezaei questioned its authorization and called it a “sign of weakness,” while the outlets argued that it rewarded Washington and eased pressure on the United States.
Reformist politician Gholamhossein Karbaschi, meanwhile, said the president should meet Trump to help resolve the country’s problems, echoing a similar appeal from senior reformist figure Mehdi Karroubi.
Lawmaker Ahmad Bakhshayesh Ardestani went further, predicting that a Pezeshkian-Trump meeting would take place in New York.
“In my view, the meeting between Pezeshkian and Trump will take place,” he said. “Last year, Pezeshkian decided to meet, but the Americans did not show up.”
Bakhshayesh Ardestani, a member of parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, also advocated acquiring a nuclear weapon before leaving the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
“Buy or build the atomic bomb, then say you are withdrawing from the NPT,” he said, while acknowledging that senior officials were not currently seeking withdrawal.
The competing statements illustrated the political constraints surrounding the New York diplomacy: Pezeshkian is said to have received apparent backing to negotiate, but officials and political factions remain divided over direct contact with Trump and the concessions Iran should seek or offer.
Those talks are unfolding as US economic pressure begins to narrow Iran’s international connections. Iranian airlines continued operating some foreign services Wednesday after a US deadline aimed at grounding the country’s fleet by threatening sanctions against companies providing fuel, ground handling, ticketing and other services.
Bloomberg cited flight-tracking data showing at least six flights leaving Iran for destinations including Bangkok, Phuket, Shanghai and Kabul after the restrictions took effect.
But the pressure appeared to be uneven rather than ineffective. Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization said flights to Baghdad and Muscat had been canceled, while Azerbaijan suspended Iranian airline services and Turkish Airlines halted its flights to Iran until at least March 2027.
The restrictions add urgency to Tehran’s diplomacy by extending the economic confrontation beyond shipping and oil into civilian aviation. At home, however, authorities sought to show that wartime damage was being repaired.
An Oil Ministry official said around half of the damaged capacity at the South Pars gas field had returned to service and that the remaining planned restoration work would be completed before winter.
At the same time, a report of a deeper Iranian military role in Yemen showed how the conflict continues to extend across the region. IRGC personnel were on the ground helping the Houthis seize Yemen’s Red Sea coast from pro-government forces, the Associated Press reported, citing 10 officials and soldiers.
The report said Iranian personnel helped direct a rapid 115-kilometer offensive, marking Tehran’s most direct intervention on behalf of the Houthis since Yemen’s civil war began in 2014. Houthi forces also penetrated the communications of the National Resistance, allowing them to monitor movements and sow confusion.
That reported intervention could complicate efforts to contain the conflict while Tehran and Washington negotiate. Iran is signaling that its government has authority to pursue an agreement, but its regional military posture and the expanding sanctions campaign continue to generate pressure that could either drive diplomacy forward or deepen the confrontation.
The digital sign on Interstate 405, near Westwood's Persian Square, briefly displayed the address of Goorkan, a Persian-language site that publishes names, photographs and personal information of people it identifies as opponents of Iran's government.
"It touches the heart of the diaspora and sends a message. We can touch you wherever you are. The sophistication is irrelevant. The message is chilling," said Roger Macmillan, an Iran and terrorism specialist and former director of security at Iran International.
Who carried out the intrusion has not been publicly established, and US authorities have not confirmed a link to the Revolutionary Guards.
Three cyber and security experts told Iran International that the incident shows how a simple intrusion can intimidate a community far from the people who carried it out.
A simple hack, a powerful message
The intrusion looked unsophisticated next to the capabilities of Russian and Chinese operators, said Amin Sabeti, a cybersecurity researcher who specializes in Iranian cyber operations.
"It's not that sophisticated hacking. It's more about the propaganda," Sabeti said.
The attackers did not need to disable a transport network or break into a secure system. Putting a web address on a public sign beside one of the largest Iranian communities outside Iran was enough.
Sabeti said the effect falls hardest on ordinary Iranians who attend protests and keep public social media accounts. Finding their photograph or their details on a threatening website leaves them wondering who is watching and what it may cost them.
"It's more about creating chaos amongst the diaspora," he said.
Emel Karsaz, an Iranian-born Los Angeles resident, told the New York Post she reported the matter to the FBI after finding her name, photograph and personal information on the site, and that she had also received threats on social media.
The California Department of Transportation confirmed that an unauthorized message appeared on the sign and said it had instructed a contractor to restore normal operations. A review is under way.
The crudeness offers no comfort, Macmillan said.
"That the hack itself is unsophisticated doesn't reassure me. If anything it confirms what this operation was actually for," he said. "Sophistication was never the point. Fear was."
Tehran has long used intermediaries and loosely affiliated actors to intimidate its opponents abroad, Macmillan said, which lets it benefit from such operations while keeping its own involvement out of view.
How vulnerable was the freeway sign?
It appears to have been a straightforward compromise of a badly secured system, said Annie Fixler, director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
"This incident is 100% about intimidation," Fixler told Iran International.
Without the investigation's technical findings, she suspected the sign had an unsecured internet connection that let the attackers change what it displayed.
"It is deeply disturbing for those that saw the message but that is probably the extent of what the hackers could do with that access," she said.
The ease of it points to a larger problem with internet-connected public infrastructure, she added.
"The incident itself is not a big deal but the fact that so much of our systems are unprotected or misconfigured such that even low level hackers can do damage is the main take away. We need to be taking security seriously."
A familiar cyber playbook
The sign follows a run of cyberattacks on American infrastructure that experts have read as demonstrations of reach rather than attempts at damage.
In August, Iran International reported that attacks on water and wastewater facilities in at least seven states appeared aimed less at crippling infrastructure than at unsettling the public.
Federal authorities opened an investigation and did not publicly attribute responsibility, though US media reported that officials considered Iran the leading suspect.
Fixler described the tactic at the time as perception hacking: gaining limited access to a system, then publicizing it to suggest a far larger capability.
Los Angeles follows the same pattern with a narrower audience.
A wider campaign against dissidents abroad
The hack comes with renewed warnings about Iranian operations against opponents abroad.
On September 15, US, British and Dutch authorities issued a joint advisory that Iranian state cyber actors had deployed spyware known as Chosen Brick against dissidents, activists and journalists. The malware can pull communications and contacts from an infected device, exposing not only the target but everyone they know.
The same month, the Islamic Republic promoted a platform called Alaj, meaning remedy in Persian, which asks the public to identify and report opponents living abroad. Iranian state media say it has identified and monitored 1,600 people, 600 of them through public submissions.
It publishes names, photographs and, in some cases, further personal details, and lists measures that could follow, including asset freezes and restrictions on consular and citizenship services.
No operational connection between Alaj, Goorkan and the freeway sign has been publicly established.
"Treating it as trivial because the hack was crude would be a mistake," Macmillan said.
