Iran’s Leader Said No Talks With the US Under Pressure: What Happened Next, From 2025 to the War of 2026

The speech

The news report this page once carried was about a few sentences spoken in Tehran.

On 12 March 2025 Ayatollah Khamenei met a gathering of university students, as he did each year. A few days earlier President Trump had said publicly that he had written to Iran’s leader proposing talks on its nuclear programme, and that Iran could be dealt with in one of two ways: by a deal or by force. The letter was carried to Tehran by an envoy from the United Arab Emirates and arrived the same day as the speech.

The ayatollah’s answer, as reported, had three parts.

• The offer was a deception, meant to make Iran look like the side refusing peace.
• The United States could not be trusted to keep an agreement, having abandoned the last one.
• Talking under threat would tighten the knot of sanctions, not loosen it.

He added that he had not yet seen the letter himself.

He said no in March and his diplomats sat down in April. In Iran, as elsewhere, a leader’s public refusal is often the opening position, not the last word.

Why he said it

To understand the refusal, you need the ten years before it.

From Tehran’s point of view the lesson was plain. It had made a deal, kept it by the inspectors’ own account, and been punished anyway. Why would a second deal with the same president be different?

From Washington’s point of view, Iran had since built a stock of enriched uranium that had no civilian purpose, and was closer to a bomb than ever.

2025: talks, then war

Spring: the talks happen after all

A month after the speech, on 12 April 2025, an American envoy and Iran’s foreign minister met in Oman, through Omani mediators. Further rounds followed in Rome and Muscat. For a few weeks both sides spoke of progress.

The sticking point never moved. The United States came to insist that Iran give up enrichment entirely. Iran said enrichment on its own soil was a right it would not surrender.

Mr Trump’s letter had set a deadline of about two months. It passed.

June: the twelve-day war

On 13 June 2025 Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, air defences and military leadership, killing senior commanders and scientists. Iran replied with waves of missiles and drones. On 22 June the United States joined in, bombing three nuclear sites. Iran fired at an American base in Qatar. A ceasefire took hold on 24 June.

Iran broke off the talks and stopped co-operating with the international nuclear inspectors.

Autumn: sanctions return

In late August Britain, France and Germany set in motion the clause of the 2015 agreement that restores United Nations sanctions if Iran breaks its terms. On 28 September 2025 those sanctions came back into force, over the objections of Russia and China.

By the end of 2025 there was no agreement, no inspection and no negotiation.

2026: the larger war

January and February: one more try

After large protests inside Iran at the turn of the year, and with an American military build-up in the region under way, contacts resumed through Oman. A round in Geneva on 26 February 2026 ended with both sides speaking of progress.

28 February: the strikes

Two days later the United States and Israel launched hundreds of air strikes across Iran. Among those killed on the first day was Ayatollah Khamenei, who had led the country for nearly thirty-seven years.

The body of senior clerics that chooses Iran’s leader named his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as successor on 8 March.

March: the strait

Iran struck back at Israel, at American bases and at Gulf states that host them. Most consequentially, it closed the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil normally sails. Oil and gas prices leapt. Several Gulf states were drawn into the fighting.

April: Islamabad

A two-week ceasefire was announced in early April, on a proposal brokered by Pakistan. Talks followed in Islamabad on 11 and 12 April.

They lasted about twenty-one hours over two days. The two sides are reported to have agreed on most points but not on the two that mattered: the strait and the nuclear programme. No agreement was signed. The United States then imposed its own naval blockade on Iranian ports.

June: a memorandum

Contacts continued, with Pakistan and Qatar as go-betweens. On 17 June 2026 the two presidents signed a memorandum of understanding: a halt to strikes, the reopening of the strait, an end to the blockade and sixty days to negotiate a final settlement. The nuclear question was left for those sixty days.

July onwards: breakdown

It did not last. From 7 July commercial ships in the strait were attacked, the United States resumed air strikes, and the truce collapsed. Reports in September spoke of new conditions passed between the two capitals through Qatar. Where matters stood in October was not established for this article.

Pakistan’s part

For Pakistani readers this is not a distant quarrel.

Why Pakistan became the mediator

Few countries could have hosted those talks.

• Pakistan shares a border of some 900 kilometres with Iran.
• It has a close security relationship with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.
• Its army chief and prime minister had built an unusually warm relationship with the American president during 2025.
• It has a large Shia minority and could not afford to be seen taking sides against Iran.
• And it had no wish to see a neighbour collapse into chaos on its western border, beside its own troubled province of Balochistan.

The Islamabad Talks did not produce an agreement. They did give Pakistan a diplomatic standing it had not enjoyed for decades, and the memorandum signed in June bore the capital’s name.

What the war has cost Pakistan

What it has brought

• Gwadar. With the strait unsafe, some shipping turned to ports outside it. Pakistan’s deep-water port, long almost idle, reported its busiest months.
• Influence. Both Washington and Tehran needed Islamabad.

Iran and Pakistan: a neighbour’s history

The two countries’ relationship is older and more tangled than most Pakistanis realise.

• 1947. Iran was the first country to recognise the new state of Pakistan.
• The 1950s to the 1970s. Both were allies of the United States and partners in regional pacts. Iran helped Pakistan in its wars with India.
• 1979. The revolution in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan pulled them apart. Pakistan drew closer to Saudi Arabia and the United States; Iran became their adversary.
• The 1990s. They backed opposite sides in Afghanistan’s civil war.
• The gas pipeline. For two decades a pipeline to carry Iranian gas to Pakistan has been planned, agreed and partly built on the Iranian side. Pakistan has not built its section, for fear of American sanctions.
• The border. The frontier runs through the homeland of the Baloch people, who live on both sides. Each country has accused the other of sheltering militants who cross to attack. In January 2024 Iran struck what it said was a militant base inside Pakistan, and Pakistan struck back inside Iran two days later. Within a week the two had exchanged ambassadors again.
• Everyday ties. Border districts of Balochistan buy Iranian fuel, food and even electricity. Tens of thousands of Pakistani pilgrims cross Iran each year on the way to shrines there and in Iraq.

So when war came to Iran, Pakistan’s position was awkward by design. It condemned the attacks on its neighbour. It did not break with Washington or Riyadh. And it offered its capital as the place where the two sides could meet.

How the strait works

The phrase “closing the Strait of Hormuz” appears in every account of this war. It is worth picturing.

The strait is the only sea exit from the Gulf. At its narrowest it is a little over thirty kilometres wide, with Iran on the northern shore and Oman on the southern. Ships keep to two lanes, one in and one out, each only a few kilometres across.

Through that gap, in normal times, pass the oil exports of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Iran itself, and nearly all of Qatar’s gas. There are pipelines that bypass it, but they can carry only a fraction.

A country does not need a great navy to close such a passage. Mines, small fast boats, drones and missiles fired from the shore are enough to make insurers refuse cover, and a tanker without insurance does not sail. That is why a country far weaker than its enemies in the air could still shake the world’s economy, and why reopening the strait became the first item in every negotiation.

For Pakistan the arithmetic is direct. The fuel in its buses, the gas in its power stations and much of the money sent home by its workers all come from the far side of that gap.

What the March 2025 speech looks like now

It is tempting to read history backwards and call the speech a turning point. It was not. Iran went to the table weeks later. The talks failed for reasons larger than any one speech: the two governments wanted incompatible things, and one of America’s allies was determined to settle the matter by force.

But one line has aged in a way its author could not have intended. He warned that negotiating under pressure would bring more pressure. Iran negotiated, and the pressure came, and then the bombs. Whether refusing would have brought anything different is a question no one can answer.

Who is who

Words used in this article

Timeline

For how Pakistan’s own foreign policy is made, read our guide to Pakistan’s politics.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Wikipedia, “2025–2026 Iran–United States negotiations” — read in part; last edited 8 October 2026.
• Wikipedia, “2026 Iran war” — read in part; last edited 8 October 2026.
• Wikipedia, “Islamabad Talks” — read in part; last edited 19 August 2026.
• Wikipedia, “Twelve-Day War” — opening read; last edited 27 September 2026.
• Wikipedia, “Ali Khamenei” — opening read; last edited 2 October 2026.
• The Tribune (India), “Iran supreme leader rejects US talks offer” — a news agency report, March 2025.
• The Statesman, “UN reimposes ‘Snapback’ sanctions on Iran, including arms embargo” — September 2025.
• ARY News, coverage of the US-Iran ceasefire and the Islamabad talks — April 2026.
• Dawn, “Economy grows 3.7pc in FY26 — fastest in four years, but short of target” — 11 June 2026; for the effect on Pakistan’s economy.