Iran’s Revolutionary Guards spokesman said Israel is in no position to launch a new war, describing current rhetoric as psychological pressure rather than a real military threat, in remarks published on Monday.
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.
Brigadier General Ali-Mohammad Naeini, spokesman and deputy for public affairs of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), told Mehr News in an extensive interview that the 12-day June conflict had reshaped regional deterrence and left Israel unable to escalate.
“The enemy does not have the conditions for a new war,” he said, adding that statements suggesting renewed confrontation were “psychological operations and cognitive warfare.”
Naeini said Iran had fully restored its command cycle within hours of the June strikes and delivered what he called a decisive response.
He said the outcome of the fighting – which Tehran describes as one of the shortest but most consequential confrontations in its recent history – showed “years of planning, drills and preparedness.”
He portrayed the conflict as a technologically complex hybrid war involving missiles, cyber operations and information battles, rather than a conventional territorial fight. Naeini said Iran’s leadership played a central role in shaping public confidence and maintaining domestic cohesion throughout the confrontation.
Naeini emphasized that Iran’s armed forces remain on high alert and continue to expand missile, drone and air-defense capabilities, but argued that Israel is constrained by its “limitations, vulnerabilities and the strategic balance created after the June war.”
While dismissing talk of renewed conflict, he warned that Iran would deliver a stronger response if attacked again.
“The armed forces are ready for a more complex war,” he said. “If the enemy commits another mistake, the response will be more forceful and more regret-inducing.”
