Iran’s parliament speaker said Sunday that Tehran will not approve any agreement with the United States until Iran’s rights are secured in “tangible” terms, adding a fresh parliamentary hurdle to a peace framework that Washington has already toughened.
The statement matters because it lands hours after Trump claimed Iran had accepted his no-nuclear-weapons demand. That earlier claim suggested the diplomatic gap might be narrowing. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf’s message points the other way: Iran is saying words are not enough, and Parliament will not rubber-stamp a deal built only on U.S. assurances.
WANA News Agency reported that Ghalibaf, speaking during a virtual session of Iran’s Parliament, said Tehran has “no trust in the words and promises of the enemy.” He said any decision would be based on concrete achievements rather than verbal commitments.
“What matters to us are tangible gains that must be achieved before we fulfill our own commitments,” Ghalibaf said, according to WANA. “Until we are certain that the rights of the Iranian nation have been secured, we will not approve any agreement.”
The Straits Times reported that the remarks came as Washington sent a new framework back to Iran with tougher terms, citing reports from The New York Times and Axios. The same report said the two sides remain far apart over two major issues: what happens to the Strait of Hormuz and what happens to Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile.
Those two disputes are now the center of the crisis. Trump has said his priorities are preventing Iran from developing or acquiring nuclear weapons and reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a route that carries a major share of global oil and gas shipments. Iran, meanwhile, has demanded sanctions relief and the release of frozen assets before making deeper concessions on its nuclear program.
Al Jazeera reported Saturday that Iran’s Foreign Ministry said exchanges with Washington were still continuing but no final agreement had been reached. It also reported that Ghalibaf said Tehran would judge any agreement by actions rather than words, and would not move unless Washington acted first.
The new angle is not simply that Iran is denying a deal. List25 has already covered Trump’s no-nukes claim, the tougher U.S. framework, and the uranium stockpile fight. The shift now is that Iran’s parliamentary leadership is publicly tying approval to measurable gains before Iranian commitments begin. That turns the dispute from a negotiation between envoys into a ratification problem inside Tehran’s own political system.
Ghalibaf also framed Iran’s military position as something diplomacy must convert into political and legal results. WANA reported that he said gains made in the military arena should be translated through diplomacy, while accusing Iran’s opponents of using economic pressure and media campaigns to create divisions inside the country.
That language makes compromise harder. If Iran’s leadership sells any agreement as the product of military leverage, it will need visible concessions to defend the deal at home. If Washington sells the same agreement as a tougher framework that forces Iran to retreat, it will have less room to grant those concessions publicly.
For now, the crisis is still stuck between claims of progress and warnings of collapse. Trump says Iran has accepted his core nuclear guarantee. Iran’s parliament speaker says no agreement will be approved until tangible rights are secured first. The distance between those two statements is where the next phase of the Iran crisis will play out.