Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian sat down with Fox News anchor Bret Baier on Thursday and delivered a message aimed squarely at American viewers: his country is not the aggressor, has no interest in a nuclear bomb, and has been forced into confrontation against its will.
Whether that account holds up against the historical record is another matter entirely.
‘The war was imposed on us’
Baier opened with a blunt framing, asking the Iranian president point-blank: “Is Iran choosing war or a deal?”
According to The Western Journal’s Nick Givas, Pezeshkian answered without hesitation. “We did not choose war. The war was imposed on us. We do not seek war,” he said, adding that Iran only fights back when attacked. “We’ve never started a war, but if they wish to keep fighting with us, we will respond strongly, resolutely.”
The Iranian president also complained about the pressure campaign Washington has maintained against his government, describing it as an effort “to force us to surrender outside of a legal framework of international law, which is impossible.”
The interview aired on Special Report as U.S.-Iran negotiations continue amid heightened tensions between the two countries, and Fox News promoted the exchange on social media.
A flat denial on nuclear weapons
When Baier turned to the nuclear question β “Do you want a nuclear bomb or not?” β Pezeshkian was equally direct. “Not at all. Not at all,” he replied, invoking the country’s slain supreme leader, who he said had issued a religious decree declaring such weapons “unholy” and “illegal.”
That denial runs up against years of U.S. intelligence assessments and congressional findings. A July congressional report on Iran’s nuclear weapons production noted that “since the early 2000s, Tehran’s construction of gas centrifuge uranium enrichment facilities has generated widespread concern in Congress that Tehran is pursuing nuclear weapons.”
The same report acknowledged that past U.S. intelligence assessments concluded Tehran had halted its weapons program and had not mastered every technology needed to build a bomb β a nuance that has fueled years of debate in Washington over how close Iran actually is to a weapon.
Decades of state-sponsored terrorism
Pezeshkian’s claim that Iran has “never started a war” is also difficult to square with the State Department’s own accounting of Iranian activity. A 2021 report from the department documented Tehran’s sustained backing of militant organizations across the Middle East, noting that Iran was “designated as a State Sponsor of Terrorism in 1984” β a label it has carried ever since.
According to that report, Iran “continued its support for terrorist-related activity in 2021, including support for Hizballah, Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza, and various terrorist and militant groups in Iraq, Syria, Bahrain, and elsewhere throughout the Middle East.”
The State Department further described how the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force serves as “Iran’s primary mechanism for cultivating and supporting terrorist activity abroad,” providing support to terrorist organizations, cover for covert operations, and a tool for creating regional instability. The IRGC itself, including the Qods Force, was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the Secretary of State in 2019.
Iran has also relied on “regional militant and proxy groups to provide deniability, in an attempt to shield it from accountability for its destabilizing policies,” the report stated.
An offer to dilute and verify
Pressed on what Tehran might be willing to give up, Pezeshkian suggested flexibility that his government has not always advertised. He said Iran would be open to lowering its enrichment levels and allowing outside inspectors to verify its actions.
“So, that weapon’s mass destruction. We said we’re willing to dilute them. It’s not a big deal. We are willing to submit ourselves to verification,” he said, according to Givas’s account.
The Iranian president pointed to a memorandum of understanding he said he signed alongside President Trump, arguing it should serve as the template for any future arrangement. “That agreement was signed, and, based on that, we are willing and still wish to move forward,” Pezeshkian said. “And the framework was agreed upon. We had not closed the Strait of Hormuz; it was open without any legal justification or framework.”
Trump claims progress as talks drag on
Trump has spent months promising an end to the standoff, though a definitive resolution has yet to materialize. Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on Tuesday, the president said “we’re making a lot of progress” on Iran.
Whether any deal comes together before the midterm elections, however, remains an open question β one that hangs over negotiations as both sides continue to test each other’s intentions.
For now, Pezeshkian’s Fox News appearance amounts to a public rebranding effort: an Iranian president framing his country as a reluctant defender rather than a regional provocateur, delivered directly to an American audience at a moment when the two governments are still trying to find a way out of their long standoff.
This article originally appeared in The Western Journal.
Source: www.thegatewaypundit.com β https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/09/iranian-president-plays-victim-fox-news-decades-terror/