Tehran threatens new targets and new weapons as MPs file a bill to quit the NPT

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Monday 21 September that it would strike new targets with new weapons if the United States attacked Iran again, and that the “geography of the war” would change. An IRGC spokesman — unnamed in the copy carried by Al Arabiya English, a Saudi-owned outlet, published at 11:57 GST and updated at 12:13 — said that in the event of a new American attack “there will certainly be significant changes in our defense and our counteroffensive.” Al Jazeera’s live blog carried an institutionally attributed line that the world “will be astonished” by the weapons Iran would use. The line was reported by Al Arabiya, Al Jazeera, Khaleej Times and CBS News. The predicate — that Washington is preparing a new strike round — is an Iranian assertion sourced to Iranian intelligence, not an established fact. Al Arabiya’s own framing, almost seven months into the war, is that the two sides are “locked in a stalemate.”

On the same day, Iranian legislators submitted a bill to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In our research that item rests on a single source, Al Jazeera’s live blog, and a bill submitted is not a bill passed: Article X of the treaty requires three months' notice to all parties and to the Security Council, and nothing retrieved establishes leadership backing, a Guardian Council position or a vote schedule. What is documented is the chain that preceded it. The IAEA circulated Board report GOV/2026/50 on safeguards implementation in Iran on 1 September; Director General Rafael Grossi addressed a Special Session of the Board on 7 September with a separate statement on verification and monitoring; and on 9 September the Board adopted a resolution urging Iran to cooperate with the Agency. The bill landed twelve days later. No source we have links the two.

The diplomatic track running underneath is murkier still. Al Jazeera sub-headlined its Monday blog “Qatar mediates talks” without venue, level or agenda. A market commentary from TradingEconomics — aggregation, and hedged with “reportedly” — says President Trump rejected Saudi calls to strike the Houthis and would probably be open to meeting President Masoud Pezeshkian at this week’s General Assembly. Khaleej Times' live blog headline for the same day reads that the United States refused visas for Pezeshkian’s UN communications team. The ceasefire spine is firmer: Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on 13 September that Washington must honour its “commitments under the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding” before Tehran reopens the Strait of Hormuz. The Washington Times reports the June memorandum, brokered through Pakistani backchannels, mandated a truce, Hormuz reopening and sixty days of direct talks, and was “considered defunct by all sides” before it lapsed.

Assessment: Read the two Iranian moves as one instrument with two settings. A warning about unseen weapons costs nothing and is unfalsifiable; an NPT withdrawal bill costs nothing at the submission stage and is entirely reversible. Both arrive in the week Iran’s president is in New York and the IAEA Board has just voted. That is the profile of leverage assembled for a negotiation, not of a decision taken. What to distrust: Tehran’s claim that American strikes are imminent, which is self-sourced and serves mobilisation; and any account of the withdrawal bill that omits Article X’s three-month clock. Watch for the Guardian Council, not the sponsors' list.