Pezeshkian answers Trump’s annihilation threat from the same UN podium, then his envoys talk for three hours

Masoud Pezeshkian addressed the 81st General Assembly on Wednesday, one day after Donald Trump used the same rostrum to ask whether he should make a deal with Iran “or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly,” adding that he had “a big decision to make.” Pezeshkian opened by saying Iranians “have been victims of terrorism,” called the American attacks “cowardly,” and said Iran would not bow its head and would fight “until our last breath.” The appearance — a head of state of a country in its seventh month of war with the United States, speaking in New York — was covered independently by the Washington Post, CNBC, NPR, PBS NewsHour, CBC and ABC News. CNBC’s reading was that he blamed Washington and Israel for global instability and accused both of illegal attacks. He offered no counter-proposal from the podium.

Trump told reporters the same day that Witkoff and Kushner had spent about three hours with Iranian officials. “It was a very good meeting,” he said, according to PBS NewsHour — then added that the Iranians present were “not the highest level.” He separately told CNBC that Iran desperately wants a peace deal and that one would likely come just after the 3 November midterms; that is a characterisation of the other side’s intent by one party to the negotiation. The National, the Abu Dhabi paper, reported on 23 September, citing unnamed sources, that Iran had tabled a road map: a regionwide ceasefire of up to 60 days, a phased reopening of Hormuz and an end to the US naval blockade, with Qatar, Pakistan and Egypt mediating and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi meeting the two envoys. No US or Iranian official has confirmed the 60-day figure on the record. Reuters reported a day earlier, citing a senior Iranian official, that Tehran was ready to reopen the strait if Washington eased military pressure and lifted the blockade.

Assessment: The load-bearing sentence of the day is “not the highest level.” A president who wanted a deal signed would not publicly downgrade his own channel within minutes of praising it; a president buying time until November would. Treat the 60-day ceasefire number as a Gulf mediator’s trial balloon rather than a term sheet — The National has real access to the Doha-Cairo-Islamabad channel and an institutional interest in a settlement, and the figure rests on unnamed sources at a single outlet. Watch two checkable things instead: whether Araghchi himself is named in any subsequent meeting, and whether Benjamin Netanyahu, who speaks Thursday on a compressed 24-hour trip with no Trump meeting on his schedule, is being kept at arm’s length while the channel runs.