By James M. Dorsey
It will take a lot more to convince Israel and its supporters that newly elected Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian means business and can deliver on his proposal to dial down tensions between the two countries.
“Let’s create a situation where we can co-exist. Let’s try to resolve tensions through dialogue,” Mr. Pezeshkian said as hostilities between Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite militia, and Israel escalated, threatening to draw Iran into a regional war.
Speaking to journalists in New York hours before the opening of this year’s United Nations General Assembly, Mr. Pezeshkian offered “to put all our weapons aside so long as Israel is willing to do the same.”
Mr. Pezeshkian’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, quickly denied the president’s outreach.
Even so, Mr. Pezeshkian’s offer, embedded in denunciations of Israel’s “barbarism,’ constituted a rare Iranian willingness to engage Israel and acknowledgment of its intelligence and surveillance-driven military prowess that has been on full display since the killing in Tehran in late July of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh.
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