Pezeshkian admits hardship: many Iranians can barely afford food
Iran's president laments the economic situation and accuses the U.S. of sabotaging talks. He is set to meet Putin in Moscow on Tuesday as the U.S. arms an aircraft carrier.
Archive image · Photo: khamenei.ir / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has acknowledged the difficult supply situation in his country. Because of the war, many Iranians are struggling to “put food on the table,” he said, according to Gulf News. At the same time, he blamed the United States for the failure of diplomacy: Iran had negotiated, “and the cowards” had ruined everything. Pezeshkian is due to meet Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin at a summit of gas-exporting countries in Moscow on Oct. 27.
Iran's ambassador to Pakistan, Reza Amiri Moghadam, stressed that Tehran remains ready for talks based on the Pakistan-brokered agreement from June. He accused Trump of rejecting an offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz if the United States lifted its naval blockade of Iranian ports. A spokesman for the Revolutionary Guards, by contrast, described U.S. threats as largely “for media consumption,” saying Iran would respond much more forcefully to any renewed attacks.
On the U.S. side, the aircraft carrier USS George Washington in the Arabian Sea is being loaded with standoff land-attack missiles and bunker-busting bombs, according to The Wall Street Journal. Asked about a possible strike as soon as this weekend, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack replied: “Absolutely.” Trump has said strikes would wait until after the Nov. 3 midterms, and some analysts also expect them to come afterward.