Tehran, Iran – “The fundamental principle is distrust towards America” – this is how senior lawmaker Abbas Moghtadaei described the situation to state television on Tuesday afternoon.
It came after an Iranian delegation, led by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, returned to Tehran from Qatar amid efforts to reach an understanding with the United States on ending the nearly three-month-long war on the country.
Hours earlier, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused Washington of committing a “blatant violation” of the shaky ceasefire reached on April 8 by attacking the southern province of Hormozgan on Monday night. It added that the strikes validated the “deep suspicion” Iran harboured towards the US.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said Iranian armed forces fired back and shot down a US-made RQ-4 drone, using a domestically-made air defence system called Arash-e Kamangir – named after a hero in Persian mythology. State television aired footage of the remains of a downed drone.
The US military said it was hitting missile launch sites and Iranian boats attempting to lay sea mines in a “defensive” move, but IRGC commanders said they have the right to retaliate.
On Tuesday afternoon, a tanker reported an external explosion and fuel leak some 60 nautical miles (about 111 kilometres) east of Oman’s capital city Muscat, according to British maritime intelligence. Iranian officials did not comment on the incident.
The escalation comes as the two sides try to hammer out the final details of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoM) that could potentially facilitate increased transit through the Strait of Hormuz, which has largely frozen since the US and Israel launched a wave of strikes on Iran on February 28.
The deal would also grant Iran access to some of its own overseas funds that have been frozen due to US sanctions and offer a pathway for a future agreement over the country’s nuclear programme.
Nicole Grajewski, an assistant professor at Sciences Po’s Center for International Research, said many in the Iranian leadership appear concerned that an agreement could simply provide operational pause, intelligence access or political cover before the US and Israel launch another round of large-scale attacks on the country.
“For the deal to be politically sellable internally, Tehran likely needs to frame it not as capitulation under military pressure but as a managed stabilisation that preserved core sovereign red lines,” she told Al Jazeera.
“That probably means maintaining some form of enrichment capability for now, avoiding immediate surrender of the stockpile, securing meaningful sanctions or asset relief, and preserving regional deterrence structures, at least formally outside the agreement.”
‘Negotiating with the enemy is pure loss’
From relatively moderate Iranian politicians in the government to the most hardline military-security factions, all have pledged that the Islamic Republic will not accede to a deal that amounts to “surrender”.
President Masoud Pezeshkian told state television earlier this week that he wants to assure the international community “we are not after nuclear weapons, we are not after insecurity in the region”.
But Majid Mousavi, the influential aerospace commander of the IRGC, wrote in a post on X, in reference to former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: “As our martyred imam said, negotiating with the enemy is pure loss.”
Mousavi said he would follow the orders of the country’s new supreme leader, Khamenei’s son Mojtaba, who said in a message to mark the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha on Tuesday, that “nations and territories of the region will no longer be the shield of American bases”. He also predicted that Israel would no longer exist in 15 years’ time, as foreshadowed by his slain father.
Ali Abdollahi, the commander of the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters and a leading figure in the war, made a first public appearance on Monday to urge the Iranian armed forces to make the “defeat” of the enemy a priority.
“The Americans talk too much and keep changing their story in a moment. We’ve said many times that we will show on the battlefield what we are capable of,” he told state television on the sidelines of a ceremony in Tehran to commemorate Iranian leaders killed during the war.
In his first public message as the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, released on Monday, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, who is also a top IRGC general, pledged, “there will be no retreat”.
IRGC commander Ahmad Vahidi has also expressed readiness to resume military confrontations with the US if necessary.
Alex Vatanka, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said decision-makers in Tehran are not just concerned about a ‘bad deal’ but also one that could force Iran to give up key leverage in the event of future disputes.
“Hardliners are especially alarmed by any discussion involving Hormuz, sanctions sequencing or nuclear concessions because they increasingly view coercive leverage, especially maritime pressure, as Iran’s main post-war bargaining asset,” he told Al Jazeera. That is why the debate inside Tehran has shifted from ‘should we negotiate?’ to ‘what exactly are we giving up?” he told Al Jazeera.
For a deal to succeed, the Iranian leadership will need to believe that some sanctions relief will be tangible and fast, he added.
Iran will also seek to preserve enough of a deterrence mechanism and symbolic dignity to avoid looking defeated, and ensure that the agreement prevents another war from breaking out in the future.
But as it stands – and there is scant information on it – Vatanka said the emerging memorandum “looks less like a historic peace settlement and more like a ceasefire-management mechanism designed to buy time, reduce immediate war risks, reopen parts of Hormuz, and defer the hardest nuclear questions into later rounds”. This would mean lingering suspicion and uncertainty would persist.
Concern for assassination
Iranian state media pundits have also claimed that senior Iranian figures would be vulnerable to assassination if military operations resume.
“If the US, at any point during the current agreement talks, gains access to our supreme leader, it will strike without any consideration for its other interests or consideration for intermediaries like Pakistan and Qatar,” Nima Akbarkhani, an IRGC-linked pundit, said on state television on Tuesday.
Ali Samadzadeh, another state-linked analyst, claimed the emerging US-Iranian agreement could even be a “honeypot” scheme to draw out leaders.
According to US media outlets, Khamenei, who has not been seen or heard from in public since the start of the war, except for written messages attributed to him, is hiding in an undisclosed secure location where even many government officials have no access to him. US officials have said this has slowed the process of talks.
Sciences Po’s Grajewski said over the next few days, the key issue for the Islamic Republic will be securing internal approval. Hardline factions will also scrutinise any concessions made to the US, even those made as part of a crisis-management memorandum that leaves more difficult issues to be faced at a later date.
“So, the realistic outcome in the near term is probably an unstable interim arrangement rather than a comprehensive settlement,” she said.
“Whether it evolves into something more durable depends almost entirely on whether the follow-on nuclear negotiations produce concrete mechanisms both sides can live with.”