Iran's president said on Sunday the Defense Ministry and the armed forces could play a wider role in helping the government address structural economic shortfalls, arguing that their technical and human-resource capacities should be aligned with national development goals.
Speaking at a meeting of the Defense Ministry’s Strategic Council, Masoud Pezeshkian said the ministry’s capabilities could help coordinate different sectors of the state and support efforts to correct fiscal and administrative shortages that have contributed to chronic budget deficits and inefficiencies.
Pezeshkian’s visit included a stop at facilities damaged during the June 12-day war with Israel, according to state media.
Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh briefed the president on plans to expand defense capabilities and deepen cooperation with public and private sectors, including technology transfer and joint industrial projects.
Pezeshkian said the armed forces’ manpower and technical expertise could be used “to help resolve problems and manage the country’s imbalances,” adding that overcoming economic strain required the same “collective mobilization” that Iran relied on during the 1980–88 war with Iraq.
He accused Iran’s adversaries of seeking to exacerbate domestic economic pressures, saying foreign powers “know that a military attack alone cannot bring down the Islamic Republic” and instead try to fuel discontent over inflation and shortages.
The president said that a “bloated administrative structure” and its associated costs remain key drivers of Iran’s budget deficit. He said his government is working to curb spending and improve productivity as it drafts next year’s budget.
“It is unacceptable to fund an administrative system, pay its staff, and yet see public dissatisfaction with the quality of services,” Pezeshkian said, urging reforms to reduce overheads and improve efficiency.
He also stressed that “unity and cohesion” were essential for addressing the country’s structural problems. “For 47 years we have focused on changing individuals rather than fixing root causes. We must begin reforms with ourselves,” he said.
Both paths remain open, Abbas Araghchi told a conference in Tehran on Sunday. “Those who want to engage with Iran must decide which experience they want to base their approach on. We are ready for both,” he said.
Araghchi described the June fighting with Israel as a success for the Islamic Republic, saying the other party failed to reach its objectives.
Tehran, he said, rebuilt its defenses rapidly. “On the first day of the war Iran prepared itself for defense within hours,” he added.
Israeli media in June reported that Israeli forces struck 1,480 military targets inside Iran over the 12 days and flew 1,500 sorties in Iranian airspace. Israel, the reports said, dropped about 3,500 munitions nationwide, with Tehran the main focus of the attacks. Thirty senior Revolutionary Guards commanders were killed, Iranian outlets said.
Iran’s military capability, Araghchi maintained, has since been restored and added that the country’s nuclear program survived the strikes.
US President Donald Trump has insisted repeatedly that American airstrikes wiped out Iran’s nuclear capacity.
Requests to reopen talks with Tehran, according to Araghchi, have resumed because military pressure failed to halt Iran’s nuclear work. “They did not achieve what they wanted through military action,” he said.
He also said last week that from Tehran’s perspective there is currently no possibility of talks with Washington, blaming what he called the absence of constructive intent from the United States.
‘Armed negotiations’
In separate remarks on the sidelines of the event on Sunday, Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh said that any direct engagement with Washington would be conducted under armed conditions because Iran does not trust the United States.
“It would certainly be an armed negotiation because we are ready to confront any deception,” Khatibzadeh added.
“The Islamic Republic has always been ready – and has expressed its readiness – to act under those circumstances within the framework set by the Supreme Leader’s directives.”
Washington has been sending mixed messages through third countries about reviving nuclear negotiations, Khatibzadeh said on Tuesday.
However, Ali Larijani, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, said Tehran has not sent any new message to the United States.
Before the June war, Tehran and Washington held five rounds of nuclear talks.
Trump said on Friday that Iran now wants to negotiate a deal after the US strikes on its nuclear sites in June, arguing that renewed US military strength had changed Tehran’s stance.
“Iran is a different place” after the June strikes, Trump said aboard his plane en route to Florida. “Iran wants to negotiate a deal, too. Everybody wants to negotiate with us now.” This shift, he said, would not have happened “if we didn’t have military strength, if we didn’t rebuild our military in my first term.”
The US president earlier told Central Asian leaders that Iran had asked the White House whether sanctions could be lifted.
Iran has rejected the US demand for a full halt to uranium enrichment.
Pollution levels in 14 cities across Khuzestan had reached the red category, meaning the air is unsafe for all groups, Iran’s national air-quality monitoring system reported on Saturday. Four other cities were listed as orange, posing risks to vulnerable populations.
Concentrations of airborne particles smaller than 2.5 microns, according to the report, had exceeded permissible limits at many monitoring stations, pushing much of the province into hazardous territory.
Rising hospital visits and wider spread
Khuzestan has faced repeated episodes of severe pollution in recent days. Farhad Soltani, acting deputy for treatment at Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, said hospital visits had risen sharply.
“The number of patients coming to hospitals increased 15 to 20 percent in October compared with the same period last year, and 20 to 25 percent in November,” he said, warning that pollution in Ahvaz and Khuzestan had reached a point where “the entire population is affected.”
Air quality has also deteriorated in other major cities. Iranian media reported that the air in the religious city of Mashhad was classified as unhealthy for sensitive groups for an eighth consecutive day on Saturday. The situation was driven by continued use of fossil fuels in industry, power plants and vehicles, combined with stagnant atmospheric conditions, Tasnim news agency wrote.
Isfahan choked for eleventh straight day
In central Iran, air quality in Isfahan remained in the red category for the eleventh consecutive day on Saturday, according to local monitoring data.
Pollution levels in the metropolis and some of its neighboring cities have risen to the point that the air is now deemed unsafe for the general population. Experts warned that conditions could deteriorate further in the coming days, citing the persistence of stagnant weather patterns and rising pollutant concentrations.
58,975 people in Iran had died from causes attributed to air pollution in the past Iranian year, equivalent to 161 deaths a day and around seven every hour, said Deputy Health Minister Alireza Raisi last week. Pollution-linked mortality, he added, had imposed an estimated $17.2 billion in economic losses over the same period.
