A senior Iranian parliamentarian has said Tehran has no intention of returning to nuclear negotiations with the United States under any form of pressure. Ali Nikzad, deputy speaker of Iran’s parliament, made the remarks in an address to a parliamentary session, Hiru News reported, crediting Al Jazeera.
Nikzad said the United States and its allies were confronted by what he called a real wall, given the strength of Iran’s armed forces and what he described as an iron commitment.
In remarks rendered by Hiru in Sinhala and translated here, he said parties including the United States must understand they have no option but to accept the power of the Islamic Republic — and that in this confrontation it would finally be the Americans, not the Iranian nation, who surrender.
He said Iran had no new proposal to put to Washington. Adversaries had been given ample opportunity for talks over a long period, he said, and had responded only by repeatedly breaking their commitments and by unlawfully bombing Iran’s peaceful nuclear facilities. On that basis, he said, the door to renewed discussion of the nuclear issue with the United States was now completely shut.
A different picture from the outlet Hiru credits
Hiru attributes its filing to Al Jazeera, but Al Jazeera’s own report published the same day does not carry Nikzad’s remarks — and it describes a negotiation that is continuing rather than one that has collapsed.
That report says Qatar is actively mediating, with Iranian delegations travelling to Doha, and that Pakistan is also involved. The talks centre on a plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Al Jazeera reports Iran as open to negotiating if its conditions are met — the lifting of sanctions, reinstatement of oil waivers, a reduced US military presence, recognition of new shipping routes, and an end to the conflict on all fronts — while simultaneously preparing for military confrontation.
US President Donald Trump said the negotiations were “going fine” but called them “not very reliable”, adding that the United States still had several Iranian sites to “take care of”. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said: “If there is a diplomatic solution, we would be open to it.”
How to read the two accounts
These are not necessarily contradictory, but they are not interchangeable. Nikzad is a parliamentary officer stating a position, not a negotiator announcing an outcome; Al Jazeera is describing what mediators are actually doing. A reader taking Hiru’s headline alone would conclude talks are over. They are not — at least not according to the outlet Hiru names as its source.
This desk has not found Nikzad’s remarks in Al Jazeera’s reporting, and they are recorded here as Hiru’s filing.
Why it matters here
The Strait of Hormuz is the chokepoint for the oil Sri Lanka buys, and this desk has tracked its effects through the year — from Iranian tankers blocked from supplies off Sri Lanka to crude trading above US$112 on Iran tensions. Whether the Hormuz plan Al Jazeera describes holds is of direct consequence to fuel pricing in Colombo.
Two verified newsrooms, with the divergence between them disclosed above rather than reconciled.
