Tehran hardliners break ranks on talks as US appears to step up demands

Alireza Doroudi, a mechanical engineering student at the University of Alabama, was detained in March and held at a facility in Louisiana after his visa was revoked. A US government attorney later said the revocation was “prudential,” meaning it would not take effect until he left the country.

Doroudi’s lawyer, David Rozas, told AP there was no evidence to support the government’s earlier claim that Doroudi posed a national security risk. He called the case a “travesty of justice.”

Doroudi’s fiancée, Sama Ebrahimi Bajgani, said the prolonged detention left him feeling pressured to abandon his legal challenge. “They just want to make him tired so he can deport himself,” she told AP.

In a letter written from detention, Doroudi called the case “pure injustice” and said he had followed all legal procedures. The immigration judge in the case denied his request for bond and set a deadline at the end of May for further motions. Rozas said Doroudi chose to stop fighting and self-deport.

Doroudi had specialized in metallurgical engineering, and his detention sparked concern on campus. The University of Alabama College Democrats described the arrest as a “cold, vicious dagger through the heart of UA’s international community.”

Doroudi’s case comes amid renewed scrutiny of the Trump administration’s policies on international students, including potential new visa restrictions for citizens of countries like Iran. In recent weeks, several other foreign students and recent graduates — including individuals from Turkey and Palestine — have been detained under national security-related reasons, prompting concern from rights groups and legal advocates.

Trump, speaking on Wednesday, said he had yet to decide on the matter and would announce his position during an upcoming trip to the Middle East. “I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings,” he added.

Reports—first published by the Associated Press—about potential plans to officially adopt the name "Arabian Gulf" in official US parlance have drawn sharp criticism from Iranian officials and also sparked widespread backlash across social media.

Reactions have cut across political lines, uniting unlikely voices in outrage. Iranians across the political spectrum, from Islamic Republic apparatchiks to the US-based exiled prince viewed any such move as an affront to their historical and national identity.

Common cause

Describing the Persian Gulf as “the strongest factor in uniting the Iranian people” in a post on X, reformist former vice president Mohammad-Ali Abtahi warned about a negative impact of renaming on Tehran-Washington nuclear talks.

Even those who support negotiations with the US, Abtahi said, would be forced to stand in opposition.

Veteran diaspora opposition figure Mohsen Sazegara told Iran International TV that the move could be a boon to a hard Iranian line in talks.

"Trump would provide Khamenei with a great opportunity to use Iranians’ sense of nationalism to his own benefit," he said. "(It's) the best lever Khamenei has to back out of the negotiations."

Exiled crown prince Reza Pahlavi also said in a statement: “The reported decision by President Trump to abrogate history, should it be true, is an affront to the people of Iran and our great civilization."

“But, once again, the true culprit of this shameful act is Ali Khamenei and his anti-Iranian regime who have so weakened our nation that foreign powers dare make such transgressions against Iran’s national identity and world history."

The exiled opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalq also issued a statement warning that any effort to change the name of the Persian Gulf would only benefit Khamenei, giving him an opportunity to deflect from domestic dissent and redirect public anger toward a foreign enemy.

Some analysts suggest the controversy may be part of a deliberate psychological tactic to destabilize Iran’s negotiating position.

Shahram Kholdi, a Canada-based Iran analyst, pointed to Trump’s close ties with Arab states and argued the maneuver could be strategic. “Trump uses every tactic to psychologically confuse the other side and gain points,” he told Iran International TV.

Pressure to exit talks

Iran’s ultra-hardliners, who had tempered their opposition to US negotiations after Khamenei’s tacit endorsement, are now urging the government to withdraw from the talks.

Naser Mesdaghi, a journalist, urged President Masoud Pezeshkian to immediately walk away from the talks if the US deviates from historical nomenclature.

“All Iranians support this decision and will endure the hardship of sanctions and war for the sake of Iran’s integrity,” he said in a post on X.

Tehran-based commentator Ali Nasri went further, framing the issue as part of a broader disinformation campaign. “This ridiculous rumor … is the next stage of psychological warfare,” he posted on X.

"Having failed to stop the negotiations, the Israel lobby and its affiliated diaspora opposition are now trying to poison and anger public opinion at every stage.”

Despite Tehran agreeing to expanded inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the dispute over enrichment has cast doubt over the timing and direction of the next round of negotiations, originally scheduled to resume this week after being delayed in Oman.

“Iran has accepted strict and intensive inspections by IAEA inspectors, and the two sides have reached an understanding on verification and control mechanisms,” an Iranian diplomatic source familiar with the talks said on condition of anonymity.

“The key disagreement is over Iran’s right to enrich uranium domestically—something the American side opposes,” the source said, adding that the US team's shifting goals were complicating the negotiations.

“In every round, the Americans bring up new topics—missiles, proxies—without a consistent framework.”

A second diplomatic source confirmed that Iran had agreed to restrain its regional allies, including by asking the Houthis to temporarily halt attacks, partly to deny Israel what he called a "pretext" to obstruct diplomacy.

US officials contacted by Iran International declined to comment on the specifics of the talks but acknowledged the urgency and fragility of the moment.

“Time is short and we need to make progress quickly. To make that happen, the Iranians need to negotiate in good faith and sincerely desire to reach a deal,” a State Department spokesperson told Iran International.

Internal Divisions in Tehran

Meanwhile Iran too has fissures of its own on the talks dossier, with hardliners continuing to criticize the talks but negotiators still appearing determined to clinch a fair deal to avoid war.

“There’s a difference between building media credibility and childish competition for scoops,” Mohammad Hossein Ranjbaran, an adviser to Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, posted on X on Tuesday.

“Agencies and esteemed officials who receive classified reports must protect them. Leaking information to favored outlets undermines national interests,” he added, in an apparent reference to a report published the day before by Nour News, a site close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s adviser Ali Shamkhani.

The outlet cited an anonymous source saying the fourth round of talks would focus on “humanitarian and security concerns," without elaborating, suggesting that the negotiations had expanded beyond the nuclear dossier—something never mentioned by officials involved in the talks.

A diplomatic source told Iran International that unauthorized disclosures could undermine the Iranian negotiating team.

The most forthright caution, curiously, has come from Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who—without referring to the current negotiations—reminded his hardline base that deals with foes are permissible if temporary.

The ultimate foe in Khamenei’s mind, of course, is America: presented more as an evil being than a country - the centerpiece of a narrative that manufactures, and is sustained by, hostility.

This narrative is, in many ways, reciprocated. Successive US administrations have portrayed Iran not just as a rival state, but the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism—a rogue actor bent on disrupting the global order.

Like Tehran’s view of America, this framing is not just rhetoric; it underpins policy, shapes alliances and narrows the space for diplomacy.

As talks resume, staunch anti-Americans in Iran warn against trusting “the Great Satan”, while the so-called hawks in the US decry any compromise with “the Mad Mullahs.”

Ingrained enmity

Despite gestures suggesting de-escalation—like the quiet removal of American flags from Iranian street protests—the hostile rhetoric has not faded. That’s because the tension is embedded not just in language, but in military posture.

The Trump administration has deployed two new warships to the region and deepened defense ties with Israel and Iran’s Arab neighbors.

Meanwhile the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen managed to strike deep into Israel with a ballistic missile landing near its main airport on Saturday.

Both sides are redrawing lines of confrontation. Diplomacy is conducted under a constant shadow of war.

"I’m issuing a serious warning: if you make one wrong move, we will open up the gates of hell on you," Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps chief Hossein Salami said on Thursday, referring to the United States and Israel.

"Sit down and stay in your place ... we have made extensive preparations."

The US government is not far off in tone. President Trump has framed the talks as a binary choice: agreement or war. “There are only two alternatives there," he told a conservative podcast on Wednesday. "Blow them up nicely or blow them up viciously."

Israel’s open threats to strike Iranian nuclear facilities and its insistence on the right to preemptive action only heighten the pressure.

In this climate, negotiations serve less to resolve conflict than to manage it. As long as each side sees the other as an irredeemable enemy—and enters talks prepared for battle—diplomacy becomes an extension of confrontation by other means.

Khamenei’s message about temporary deals may have been cryptic. But it had a clear implication: that diplomacy is a tool for crisis management, not conflict resolution.

Tehran and Washington may speak of de-escalation, but their dominant narratives remain unchanged—and the structures that sustain enmity show no signs of retreat.

Seen in this light, the ongoing talks appear to be more of a phase in a familiar cycle than an auspicious breakthrough.

Even if a deal is reached, without structural change, the hostility will likely endure—and should it unravel, military confrontation may appear a legitimate course more then ever.

The measure targets Hebei Xinhai Chemical Group Co., an independent refinery Washington asserts has received hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of Iranian crude, some linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Three Chinese port operators in Shandong province were also sanctioned for managing terminals that received sanctioned shipments from Iran’s shadow fleet, vessels used to hide the origin of shipments.

“The United States remains resolved to intensify pressure on all elements of Iran’s oil supply chain to prevent the regime from generating revenue to further its destabilizing agenda,” treasury secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement released on the website of the treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

Seven vessels and the companies that own them were also sanctioned, according to OFAC citing their role in transferring Iranian petroleum to China. Among those were tankers flagged in Panama and Hong Kong.

Two Indian ship captains were also designated for years-long involvement in steering sanctioned tankers carrying Iranian oil, the US treasury said.

The sanctions fall under executive orders by US president Donald Trump as part of his so-called maximum pressure campaign on Iran alongside the ongoing diplomatic push to resolve the standoff with Tehran over its nuclear program.

"We're trying to work on Iran to get that solved without having to get into any bombing," Trump said in his latest statement on Iran on Thursday.

"As we say, big bombing. I don't want to do that. I want them to be very successful," he added.