Iranian president: ‘Dialogue does not mean surrender’

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Tehran would not relinquish the “legal rights of the people and the country” even as it engages in diplomacy, after U.S. President Donald Trump postponed a planned military strike at the request of Gulf leaders who urged more time for negotiations.

“Dialogue does not mean surrender,” Pezeshkian wrote in a post on X on Monday, adding that the Islamic Republic would enter talks with “dignity” and “authority” while safeguarding national interests and honor. He said Iran would continue to serve its people “with logic and with all our might.”

Meanwhile, a senior U.S. official told Axios journalist Barak Ravid on Monday that the White House believes the Iranian regime’s new offer is inadequate and risks the renewal of the war.

“We are really not making a lot of progress. We are at a very serious place today. The pressure is on them to be responsive in the right way,” the senior U.S. official said. “It’s time for the Iranians to throw a bit of candy out. We need some real, sturdy and granular conversation [regarding the nuclear program]. If that’s not gonna happen, we will have a conversation through bombs, which will be a shame.”

Two U.S. officials said Trump is expected to meet with his top national security team in the Situation Room on Tuesday to review military options.

Trump in a Monday press conference provided more details on his earlier Truth Social post announcing that a planned military strike for Tuesday had been delayed.

“I was asked by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and some others if we could put it off for two or three days, a short period of time, because they think that they are getting very close to making a deal. And if we can do that where there’s no nuclear weapon going into the hands of Iran, I think and if they’re satisfied, we will be probably satisfied also,” the president told reporters.

“We’ve informed Israel. We’ve informed other people in the Middle East that have been involved with us, and it’s a very positive development, but we’ll see whether or not it amounts to anything. We’ve had periods of time where we’ve had, we thought pretty much getting close to making a deal and didn’t work out, but this is a little bit different,” Trump said. “Now we were ready to go tomorrow very big and not something I wanted to do, but we have no choice because we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”

The U.S. and Israel launched joint military operations against the Iranian regime on Feb. 28, with a ceasefire holding since April 8.

Iran has used the ceasefire to excavate scores of previously bombed ballistic missile sites, reposition mobile launchers and refine its tactics for any resumption of strikes, according to a U.S. military official quoted in a New York Times report on Monday.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, said many of Iran’s missiles had been fired from deep underground caves and other facilities carved into granite mountains that are difficult for American attack aircraft to destroy, leading U.S. forces to focus on collapsing the portals rather than eliminating the sites entirely. The Iranian regime has been able to dig out and restore a significant number of those launch positions.

U.S. military officials told the Times that ballistic-missile sites were among the options the Pentagon has developed as potential targets if the United States renews strikes on the Iranian regime.

An Israeli source told Kan News on Sunday that with a green light from Trump, Washington and Jerusalem are expected to jointly attack Iran, with the country’s national energy infrastructure on the target list. The Israeli public broadcaster noted that the White House had requested it not be attacked in the previous round.