Rezaei sends Washington seven conditions and keeps the NPT on a short leash

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council secretary, Maj. Gen. Mohsen Rezaei, said on 19 September that Tehran has sent Washington seven conditions for any return to talks. He named three of them in an Al Jazeera interview: an end to the war on all fronts, the release of frozen Iranian assets, and an end to the US naval blockade. The other four have not been published in full. Iranian reports link them to the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and to sanctions relief.

Rezaei said Qatari and Pakistani mediators are still in the channel and that Qatar has already forwarded the list. Tehran, he said, is waiting for a reply from President Donald Trump. He also said Iran has not decided to leave the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, that the late leader’s fatwa against nuclear weapons still stands, and that the nuclear doctrine has not changed. In the next sentence he added that “we cannot predict what the future holds” and that US and Israeli actions “could justify” an NPT exit.

That pairing is the story. The public offer is a return to a June framework. The private warning is that the framework can die if Washington chooses another round of strikes.

In mid-June the United States and Iran signed a 14-point framework meant to lead to a final deal within 60 days, with a possible extension by mutual consent. The extension never came. One clause required Iran to keep merchant traffic moving through Hormuz, toll-free, for 60 days. In return Washington was to lift the naval blockade of Iranian ships and ports and unfreeze assets, with amounts and procedures left for later talks. The clause on Hormuz is the one that broke first. Each side now treats the other’s reading of that paragraph as proof of bad faith.

Rezaei’s three public conditions map onto that June text. “All fronts” is the addition. He told dpa that Iran wants an end to the Houthi-Saudi war as well as to the US campaign. That demand pulls Yemen, the Red Sea and the Saudi oil system into a negotiation that began as a nuclear and naval bargain. It also gives Tehran a way to claim credit for any pause in Houthi fire without ordering one in public.

Trump told Axios on Thursday that he was near a decision on whether to “go in and annihilate” the Iranian government. Rezaei’s answer was that Trump’s “assessments and calculations regarding Iran were flawed,” that “the war was instigated by Netanyahu,” and that “Trump’s threats will yield no results.” He said Iran had recently test-fired an anti-ship missile near a US carrier and that, if attacked again, it would hit US bases and “Washington’s interests in the region with even greater force.”

The Pentagon has already put a number on the war that Rezaei wants to freeze. CENTCOM told Congress that the bill through 3 September was $43.6 billion, with munitions accounting for $28.1 billion. Eighteen US service members have been killed and more than 800 wounded. Those figures sit beside Rezaei’s claim that Iran has “identified vulnerabilities” in US forces. Neither side has published the targeting data that would let a reader test that claim.

On the same Saturday the Houthis fired at Riyadh and claimed strikes on Yanbu. Rezaei’s “all fronts” language is how Tehran folds that raid into the talking points. If Washington wants a Hormuz deal, it is being told it must also quiet Yemen. If Riyadh wants the capital off the target list, it is being told the path runs through a US-Iran text. That is a bargaining structure, not a ceasefire.

The incomplete list of seven conditions is useful to Tehran for the same reason it is frustrating to mediators. Three items can be briefed to cameras. Four can be moved in private. Sanctions relief, prisoner questions, enrichment limits and the status of allied militias have all appeared in earlier Iranian statements. None of those has been locked to Saturday’s list in a document that both sides accept.

Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi have UN visas for High-Level Week under host-country rules, with shopping and travel limits and a smaller delegation than last year. Pezeshkian is listed to speak on Wednesday after Trump on Tuesday. Rezaei’s interview is the brief those men will carry into New York: talks are possible, the June paper is the reference, the blockade and the frozen funds are the price, and the NPT is on the table if the price is refused.

A reader who has watched this war for seven months already knows the shape of a possible deal. Saturday added a clock and a warning. The clock is Trump’s “major decision.” The warning is Rezaei’s sentence about the NPT. The seven conditions, most of them still unpublished, are the space between those two lines.