Iran-US Talks: Pezeshkian’s Difficult Balancing Act Between Protest and Diplomacy

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was in Mashhad Tuesday to attend ceremonies marking the 40th day since the deaths of protesters — and he looked, by multiple accounts, broken. He stood before a sea of photographs of the dead, visibly overcome by the weight of a moment his government helped create and now must reckon with.
Hours later, his foreign minister was in Geneva announcing that nuclear talks with the United States had been “more constructive” than before and that general guiding principles had been agreed. The two images together captured the impossible position of an Iranian president who came to power on a reformist platform and now presides over one of the most intense crackdowns in the Islamic Republic’s recent history.
Pezeshkian reportedly intervened to secure the release of a group of reformist politicians arrested last week — a small but symbolic act of mitigation within a system that has otherwise moved aggressively against dissent. More than 10,500 protesters have been summoned for trial. Reformists face new charges. Detainees report physical coercion during interrogations. The judiciary shows no sign of relenting.
Against this domestic backdrop, the president must also navigate the nuclear file — a process where any success will depend on his government’s credibility and coherence. Foreign investors and international partners may be willing to overlook Iran’s domestic situation if a nuclear deal is struck, but they are also watching closely for signs that the government is in control of its own direction.
The fundamental tension is between a government that needs international legitimacy to survive economically and a security apparatus that appears willing to undermine that legitimacy through domestic repression. Pezeshkian is caught between them, and his anguished expression in Mashhad may have said more than any diplomatic communiqué.