Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s National Security Council, has refuted US media claims that he has made a fresh push to resume nuclear talks with Washington.
“We will not negotiate with the United States,” he wrote in a post on X.
The statement came after The Wall Street Journal claimed Larijani made the push through Omani mediators after Khamenei’s killing.
Iran’s leaders ‘fears surrender far more’ than war
Meanwhile, Trita Parsi, the cofounder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, says he believes the US and Israel’s strategy in Iran was to kill as many senior leaders as possible until someone accepted a surrender.
But he said this was a miscalculation.
Trump thought that by bringing aircraft carriers into the Gulf, “this would scare the Iranians enough in order to get them to surrender, not understanding that this particular theocracy fears surrender far more than it fears war”, Parsi told Al Jazeera.
This is because the Iranian government believes it can survive a war, but it will not be able to survive a surrender.
To find someone willing to capitulate “would essentially necessitate, not just taking out layers and layers of leadership, but really destroying the country as a whole”, he said.
“And the Trump administration does not know how long that would take, even if it’s achievable. And during that time, the Iranian strategy is to inflict as much damage as possible on the United States, on US troops, on the global economy, on neighbouring states, on global markets, in order to make this simply too costly for Trump to even try this.” African Eye Report/Al Jazeera
