Speaking at the 26th Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Bishkek on Monday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian offered Washington a conditional return to the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, the ceasefire framework signed on June 18 after roughly three months of Pakistani and Qatari mediation. If the United States resumes its obligations under the document, he said, Iran will reciprocate immediately. American compliance, he added, lasted under two weeks; Iran's responses since have been proportionate.
The offer came wrapped in a victory narrative. Pezeshkian told SCO leaders that the American and Israeli attacks of June 13, 2025 and February 28, 2026 opened a 40-day war that began with the killing of Iran's Supreme Leader, a strike on a school in Minab that killed 168 students and teachers, and an attack on a stadium in Lamerd that left 200 dead and wounded. Iran, he said, inflicted heavy strategic defeats on both attackers and forced a ceasefire the US never wanted.
Washington's account is the mirror image. Asked on Monday whether he had ruled out using a nuclear weapon against Iran, Trump called the question stupid, saying Iran had already been defeated militarily. He described Iran as a "failed nation" — 350% inflation, no functioning currency, unpaid soldiers, dead leaders, and a navy, air force and surveillance network he says no longer exist — while warning that the US may still "smack them."
Hormuz remains the pressure point. Trump announced on August 25 that the Navy had cleared all mines from the strait's international waters and imposed a zero-tolerance policy on new mine-laying; a US official told The Jerusalem Post that CENTCOM had reopened both inbound and outbound lanes. Trump now says traffic averages 30 ships a night, and that Space Force is watching the waterway alongside Pickaxe Mountain and three destroyed nuclear sites.
Tehran and Muscat tell it differently. Abbas Araghchi and Badr al-Busaidi announced a proposed framework for a temporary navigation corridor and a joint mine-clearance project — an admission that mines remain.
The shooting has not stopped. US forces struck two Iranian launchers on Larak Island on Sunday. Vice President JD Vance told Fox News that Iran's leadership is "really, really crazy" and will fire even on its own allies to choke the flow of oil.
Pezeshkian's remedy is structural: he asked the SCO to build a development bank, an export-credit and investment union, and an energy consortium — machinery designed to make Iran harder to strangle next time.
Photo: Gemini AI