Pezeshkian Tells Al Jazeera Iran Has Lost Faith in US Negotiations as Trump Rejects Hormuz Offer

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has told Al Jazeera that Tehran no longer has confidence in negotiations with Washington, saying repeated rounds of talks have been followed first by attacks and then by sanctions — a sequence he said has exhausted the Iranian leadership's patience with the diplomatic process.

Pezeshkian's remarks carried immediate weight because they came shortly before US President Donald Trump rejected an Iranian proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days. The rejection, reported the same day, undercut one of the few concrete de-escalation steps on the table and deepened the sense that the United States and Iran are locked in a cycle of escalation rather than a return to talks.

According to the Al Jazeera report, published on 26 September 2026, Pezeshkian pointed to a consistent pattern in which agreements were reached in principle and then abandoned under pressure. That pattern, he suggested, is what has destroyed trust — not a single dispute, but the repetition of them.

The comments arrive amid continuing coverage of the US-Israel war on Iran and of a resumption of strikes, with Al Jazeera's related coverage examining why hostilities have resumed and what they mean for peace talks. In that setting, an explicit public declaration that Tehran no longer trusts the negotiation format is significant: it signals that Tehran is prepared to talk publicly about the failure of diplomacy itself, not merely about individual points of disagreement.

The Strait of Hormuz proposal at the centre of the moment was, by its terms, an urgent measure. A seven-day timetable for reopening the waterway implied that the strait had effectively been closed or badly disrupted, with consequences for one of the most important shipping chokepoints in the world. Any deal that could restore commercial traffic that quickly would have been an immediate, visible win for the region, for energy markets and for the hundreds of vessels that transit the strait daily.

Trump's rejection of that offer removed the most concrete near-term off-ramp and prompted Pezeshkian's own assessment of where talks now stand. Whether the sequence was deliberate or coincidental, the order of the two developments points to a widening gap between what Tehran is offering on the ground and what Washington is prepared to accept.

Al Jazeera's related coverage has also tracked what has happened since a US-Iran memorandum of understanding was reached on June 17, following the earlier period of negotiations and any subsequent breakdown. That timeline matters for understanding Pezeshkian's framing: the gap between a signed understanding and subsequent strikes is precisely the kind of experience he appears to be invoking when he questions whether commitments made in talks will hold.

Questions over the whereabouts of a US submarine have added to the atmosphere of mistrust. Al Jazeera has separately reported on what is known about Iran's claim to have captured an unmanned US submarine, an episode that remains contested and unresolved in public reporting. Unverified claims of that kind tend to harden positions on both sides, particularly when they are aired at a moment when negotiations are already fragile.

The stalemate is not confined to Washington and Tehran. In related developments at the United Nations General Assembly, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister accused Iran of "flagrant attacks" and condemned the Houthi movement, while Cuba accused the United States of deliberately inflicting humanitarian suffering. Those interventions, appearing in the same news cycle, underscore how widely the dispute has been contested internationally — including by allies and partners of the US.

For Tehran, Pezeshkian's remarks serve a domestic purpose as much as an external one. Declaring a loss of trust allows a government under sustained military and economic pressure to present continued resistance as a matter of dignity and principle, rather than an inability to secure concessions. It also raises the political cost of appearing to capitulate in any future round of talks.

Analysts following the file would be watching for a gap between words and policy. A public statement that talks are no longer trusted does not, on its own, close the diplomatic channel; Iran's offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within a week suggests a mechanism for de-escalation was being floated as recently as the day before it was rejected. Whether that mechanism survives Trump's refusal is now the central question.

The implications extend well beyond the two governments. Continued closure or restriction of the Strait of Hormuz affects Gulf shipping, insurance costs, and energy prices far beyond the region, while the humanitarian consequences of continued strikes add pressure to an international debate that is already playing out at the UN. For European and Asian importers most dependent on Gulf supply chains, the timeline matters more than the rhetoric.

The coming days will show whether Washington's rejection was a negotiating position or a final position. If Pezeshkian's words signal a genuine hardening, Tehran may test Washington's resolve through continued pressure on the strait and on regional partners rather than returning to the table. If they prove to be a warning ahead of further escalation, the alternative opening remains the one Tehran itself proposed: a rapid, verifiable reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

For now, the signal from the Iranian presidency is unambiguous. Pezeshkian told Al Jazeera that Iran no longer trusts talks with Washington, and the US president's rejection of an Iranian offer — made within hours of that assessment — suggests the two positions are further apart than they have been at any point in recent weeks.