Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei says Iran now faces a damaging situation of “no peace, no war,” following Israel’s crippling air campaign in June. Since 2018, the aging ruler had insisted that Iran could avoid both concessions and conflict. The Israeli strikes, followed by U.S. bombings of nuclear sites, appear to have overturned his calculus.
“One of the country’s dangers is precisely this condition of ‘no war, no peace’—it is not good, it is not a healthy atmosphere,” Khamenei told President Masoud Pezeshkian’s government during a rare public appearance, one of only a few since he went into hiding during the Israeli air campaign.
Iranian journalist Hossein Aghaei, now living abroad, mocked him on social media: “You ate your own words, but the real blow hasn’t come yet. Against the #Chain_of_Reaction you’ve got no chance: step out of your rat hole and they’ll kill you, stay inside and you’ll rot in disgrace. Remember this, Rat-Ali.”
If Tehran abandons the Non-Proliferation Treaty, it will deepen its diplomatic isolation and destroy whatever slim chance remains of reaching an agreement with the West.
Meanwhile, hardliner Iranian lawmakers threatened to pass a resolution to leave the Non-Proliferation Treaty but failed to do so on Sunday, September 7, 2025, as talks with the European Union continued. Officials floated the threat after Britain, France, and Germany—the E3—announced their decision in late August to reimpose dormant United Nations sanctions suspended under the 2015 nuclear deal.
If Tehran abandons the Non-Proliferation Treaty, it will deepen its diplomatic isolation and destroy whatever slim chance remains of reaching an agreement with the West. Nor will an actual departure from the treaty resolve issues with Washington. When North Korea threatened to leave the Non-Proliferation Treaty prior to the 1994 Agreed Framework, Robert Gallucci, chief U.S. negotiator with North Korea at the time, explained why simply withdrawing from the treaty would not end the crisis. “If North Korea could walk away from the treaty’s obligations with impunity at the very moment its nuclear program appeared poised for weapons production, it would have dealt a devastating blow from which the treaty might never recover,” he and his aides explained. The U.S. position was that states could withdraw, but only if they first came into compliance and addressed all outstanding issues from the time they were subject to Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty commitments and constraints.
Regardless, for now, the threat looks like little more than a bargaining tactic. The European powers and the United States demand an end to Iran’s uranium enrichment, strict limits on its ballistic missiles, and a halt to its regional meddling. Iran has accumulated about 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent—enough for ten bombs if further refined to weapons-grade purity. Since the Israeli and American strikes, no one knows the status of this stockpile, though some analysts suspect Tehran dispersed the material across several sites.
Talks with the E3, including phone discussions and a face-to-face meeting between Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas in Qatar on September 6 produced little. Araghchi claimed afterward that “a better understanding of the situation is emerging,” but his words inspire little confidence.
Tehran is negotiating with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which demands the resumption of on-the-ground inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities.
At the same time, Tehran is negotiating with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which demands the resumption of on-the-ground inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities. Here, too, the regime is dragging its feet. On September 8, a hardline newspaper reported that Tehran is haggling over which inspectors can visit—debating their nationality and even their past positions on Iran’s nuclear program. The level of access remains in dispute, leaving observers skeptical about progress.
Iran had curtailed International Atomic Energy Agency inspections in 2021 as it entered fruitless negotiations to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—the 2015 nuclear deal—after the Biden administration took office.
The International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors began its quarterly session in Vienna on September 7, and the tone of its final resolution will signal Western patience—or anger—with Tehran. At its June session, the board formally declared Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations for the first time in nearly two decades, allowing the agency to stop certifying that Iran’s program remained exclusively peaceful. Israel’s air attacks on nuclear and military targets began on June 12, just hours before that meeting concluded.
Facing economic collapse and public anger over deepening poverty, Khamenei used his September speech to urge the government to select ten essential goods and keep their prices stable. But he offered no plan to finance subsidies that could cost tens of billions of dollars. Instead, he casually told ministers to “choose these items,” even though his regime has no money to pay for such a program.
The Islamic Republic now muddles through the most serious crisis of its forty-six-year history. Its military weakness stands exposed to the world. It has lost much of its regional influence and credibility at home. It survives day-to-day by selling cut-rate oil to China, clinging to the hope that it can somehow extract a favorable deal from the West and avert another Israeli strike. It is not a bet that will likely pay off.
