On Saturday 24 October 2026, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian blamed the United States for the failure of an interim deal meant to end the war with the United States and Israel — then urged both sides to return to it and conclude it, even as Tehran warned that any new strikes would draw a response several times greater.
Published 24 October 2026 · 23:02 GMT
On Saturday 24 October 2026, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian blamed the United States for the failure of an interim deal meant to end the war with the United States and Israel — then urged both sides to return to it and conclude it, even as Tehran warned that any new strikes would draw a response several times greater. On Saturday 24 October 2026, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, in remarks broadcast on Iranian state television, blamed the United States for the failure of an interim deal with Iran, but said there should be a new attempt at concluding it.
On Saturday 24 October 2026, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, in remarks broadcast on Iranian state television, blamed the United States for the failure of an interim deal with Iran, and said there should be a new attempt at concluding it; the same day, Iran’s armed forces chief Ali Abdollahi said United States forces would not be allowed in the Gulf under any circumstances, and the Revolutionary Guard warned that even limited strikes would draw a response several times greater.
The reason the interim deal failed — Pezeshkian attributes the failure to Washington, while the American position as reported is that pressure through blockade and sanctions, and the insistence that the nuclear programme be addressed, must continue — and the accounts differ on whether exchanged messages with Washington amount to negotiations, with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi saying messages have been exchanged but no negotiations are under way.
The text, dates and signatories of the interim deal; the precise step at which it broke down; what reviving or concluding it would require in sequence; whether any American decision on new strikes has been taken or merely discussed; and what, if anything, mediators including Pakistan and Qatar have carried in writing between the sides since Saturday.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, in remarks broadcast on Iranian state television on Saturday 24 October 2026, blamed the United States for the failure of an interim deal with Iran, and at the same time said there should be a new attempt at concluding it. His words, reported by Reuters from its Dubai newsroom and carried in full by Al Jazeera, were blunt about the past and open about the future in the same breath. “We were having negotiations, the cowards (Americans) messed everything up,” Pezeshkian said, according to the Reuters account of the broadcast. “I still think we should go and conclude it,” he added. Al Jazeera, which also reported the remarks from Press TV, put the same sequence in a wider frame: Pezeshkian blamed Washington for the unravelling of an interim deal aimed at ending the war with the United States and Israel, and said both sides should return to the deal and conclude it.
Several facts are confirmed by more than one account of Saturday. First, the speaker and the occasion: Pezeshkian, speaking on state television on Saturday, addressed an interim deal whose collapse he attributed to Washington. Second, the military warnings that surrounded his remarks: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned, in comments reported by the semi-official Fars News Agency, that even limited strikes would trigger a response “several times greater”. Third, the Gulf warning from the top of the armed forces: Chief of Staff Ali Abdollahi said on Saturday that the United States military would not be allowed in the Gulf “under any circumstances and at any time”, and that President Donald Trump could only “dream” of seeing American forces enter the Gulf, a dream he would take to his grave. Fourth, the political calendar: Trump said on Friday that he “may do another little Epic Fury”, using the codename of the United States-Israeli war against Iran that began on 28 February.
What remains unknown is larger than what Saturday settled. No account published on Saturday sets out the text of the interim deal, its dates, its signatories, or the precise step at which it broke down. Pezeshkian said negotiations were under way and that Washington “messed everything up”, but neither his broadcast remarks as reported nor the wire account names the meeting, the proposal, or the American decision that ended it. It is also unclear what “conclude it” would mean in practice now: whether it means reviving the same interim terms, starting from a new text, or accepting a different sequence in which a ceasefire, a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, a lifting of the naval blockade, and negotiations on the nuclear programme follow in a different order. A separate, unresolved question is the state of back-channel contact. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said messages have been exchanged with the United States envoy, but that no negotiations are under way — a distinction that leaves open whether Saturday’s call to conclude a deal refers to talks that exist, talks that stopped, or talks that would have to be rebuilt.
A failed interim deal is dangerous for a reason that a simple absence of talks is not: it leaves both sides able to say the other side cannot be trusted, while the weapons, the blockades and the shipping restrictions remain in place. Pezeshkian’s formulation captures that trap exactly. By blaming Washington and still urging a conclusion, he keeps a diplomatic door open while giving Tehran a reason, in its own telling, to doubt that anything agreed will hold. That matters beyond the two capitals because the Strait of Hormuz carries about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas in peacetime, and Iranian forces have restricted traffic through it since the war began on 28 February, while the United States has imposed a counter-blockade on Iranian ports and ships. Every week in which an interim arrangement is described as failed rather than revived is a week in which tankers, insurers, Gulf states and energy buyers must price a waterway that can be narrowed by a mine, a warning or a strike.
Read through the Bureau’s five dimensions, Saturday’s statements form a timetable disguised as rhetoric. Geopolitically, three clocks are running at once: the Israeli election on Tuesday, the American midterms on 3 November, and the open-ended clock of the Hormuz restrictions, where the Revolutionary Guard said on Friday that two supertankers carrying more than 4.5 million barrels of crude had been abandoned at sea after hitting mines. Economically, the interim deal is the only instrument on the table that promises to move all three clocks at once — shipping, sanctions and the nuclear question — which is why its failure is priced into oil and insurance markets even when no shot is fired. Technologically, the contest is about targeting and denial — who can hit a ship, close a strait, or keep a carrier at a distance — and Abdollahi’s argument turns on exactly that point, claiming American carriers stay away because Iranian fire can reach them. Saturday therefore did not change the balance of forces. It changed the language in which the next decision will be justified.
The second-order effects of Saturday will fall first on mediators, not on armies. If Pezeshkian’s account — that Washington wrecked a negotiation already under way — is accepted by Gulf and Asian capitals, the next mediator will demand firmer guarantees before carrying a proposal, and will insist on a written sequence rather than an oral understanding. If Washington’s account prevails, the same mediators will instead press Tehran to prove that a concluded deal would be kept. Either way, the price of mediation rises. A second effect concerns shipping: insurers and tanker operators, hearing both a “several times greater” warning and a “dream to his grave” Gulf warning in the same day, will treat the southern Hormuz route that Tehran calls illegal as a risk to be priced, not a passage to be assumed. A third effect is domestic. In Tehran, a president who blames Washington and still calls for a deal gives hardliners a grievance and pragmatists a programme in the same sentence — a combination that can hold a coalition together for a week, and fracture it the moment a concrete text appears.
Four markers will show whether Saturday was rhetoric or a turning point. The first is Israel’s election on Tuesday, and whether the government that emerges keeps Netanyahu’s stated commitment to overthrowing Iran’s government or softens it into a negotiating position. The second is Washington: whether Trump, after the Florida rally language about “another little Epic Fury”, follows the envoy signals reported at the weekend — including Ambassador Tom Barrack’s reported remark that a strike could come “absolutely” this weekend — or holds to the pressure track of blockade and sanctions until after the 3 November midterms. The third is the mediator channel: whether Pakistan, Qatar or another intermediary carries a written proposal, and whether Araghchi’s distinction between exchanged messages and formal negotiations narrows or widens. The fourth is the waterway itself: whether Hormuz traffic, mine incidents and tanker movements ease or tighten in the coming days.Readers following the wider standoff can also read Iran’s earlier vow of an “apocalyptic war” if strikes resume, the envoy’s weekend-strike remark and Trump’s response to it, and the eight foreign ministers who urged diplomacy over new strikes.
The Western lens: a quote, a warning and a timetable Western wire reporting, led by Reuters from Dubai, treated Saturday as a story in two halves: the quote and the threat that framed it. The quote — blame for Washington, a call to conclude the deal — was reported straight, without embellishment, because it was the news. The threat was reported alongside it: Trump’s “Epic Fury” remark, the Revolutionary Guard warning of a response “several times greater”, and Abdollahi’s Gulf warning.
The Eastern lens: the mediator in the middle of the story Reporting from Asia put a different actor at the centre: the mediator. Times Now, reporting from India, noted that Iran’s ambassador to Islamabad, Reza Amiri Moghadam, said on Saturday that Tehran remains open to talks with Washington under a Pakistan-brokered interim deal, and that Iran had conveyed through Pakistan that it was prepared to reopen the Strait of Hormuz if Washington lifted its naval blockade — a proposal Moghadam said the American president rejected by insisting the blockade of Iranian ports would continue. A Korean outlet, JKN, reported Abdollahi’s Gulf warning in full, including the Iranian claim that foreign forces approaching the strait could become targets.
The Southern lens: Doha reports the war, the region counts the cost Al Jazeera, reporting from Doha, gave Saturday its fullest regional context: the interim deal, the fear that fighting could resume imminently, the Guard warning, Abdollahi’s Gulf statement, Mohajerani’s defence warning, and the meetings of judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei with Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei about corruption and compensation for Iranians affected by the war. The Southern telling does not treat the deal as an abstraction. It places it beside the shipping lane, the blockade and the families seeking compensation, and it notes that Netanyahu remains committed, in Al Jazeera’s account, to overthrowing Iran’s government — a position that makes any “conclusion” of a deal a question about the survival of the government signing it, not only about its terms.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, speaking on state television on Saturday, blamed the United States for the failure of an interim deal with Iran. In the same remarks he said there should be a new attempt at concluding it, saying negotiations had been under way before Washington, in his words, messed everything up.
The interim deal was aimed at ending the war with the United States and Israel, and Hormuz shipping has been restricted since the war began on 28 February. About a fifth of the world’s oil and gas passed through Hormuz in peacetime, so a failed deal leaves tankers, insurers and Gulf states pricing a waterway that can be narrowed by mines, warnings or strikes.
The Revolutionary Guard warned, in comments reported by Fars, that even limited strikes would draw a response several times greater. Armed forces chief Ali Abdollahi said United States forces would not be allowed in the Gulf under any circumstances, and spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said Tehran would respond to aggression with severe consequences.
Watch Israel’s election on Tuesday, Washington’s signals before and after the 3 November American midterms, and whether mediators carry a written proposal rather than an oral understanding. Hormuz traffic and mine incidents will be the earliest physical sign of whether the standoff is easing or tightening in the coming days.
