Aletho News

Iran in the face of the armed diplomacy of imperialism

By Sayid Marcos Tenorio | MEMO | February 23, 2026

The ongoing negotiations between the United States and Iran, mediated by Oman and recently held in Geneva, have been presented by Western diplomacy as a technical effort to contain nuclear risks. This version is a carefully constructed farce.

What is at stake is not the so-called “non-proliferation”, but a direct dispute between national sovereignty and imperial domination, conducted in order to preserve the regional hegemony of “Israel” and to keep the Middle East under the strategic tutelage of the US–Zionist axis.

The United States does not negotiate in the name of peace or international security. It negotiates as the diplomatic and military arm of the Zionist regime, tasked with neutralising any regional power that escapes the colonial control imposed after the Second World War.

Iran is today the principal target of this machinery because it dares to assert political, scientific, and strategic autonomy in a region that Washington and Tel Aviv treat as a protectorate.

The real nature of these “negotiations” becomes evident in the adopted method. While speaking of dialogue, the US reinforces its military presence in the Gulf, deploys aircraft carriers, issues public threats, and makes it clear that the alternative to an agreement is violence.

This is the old gunboat diplomacy, in which the empire demands concessions under blackmail. This is not negotiation between sovereign states; it is political extortion disguised as a diplomatic process.

Washington’s central argument, wrapped in an alleged Iranian nuclear risk, does not withstand any honest analysis. Iran does not possess nuclear weapons, has not announced any intention to produce them, and accepts international verification mechanisms. The real problem is not nuclear; it is geopolitical.

What troubles the US and “Israel” is the existence of a state that refuses to integrate into the West’s colonial security architecture, that maintains its own deterrent capability, and that politically and morally supports the peoples of the region against occupation and aggression.

This is why the demand for “zero enrichment” reappears as a mantra of the Zionist consortium. It is an illegal, discriminatory, and politically obscene imposition. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons explicitly recognises the right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

Even so, this right applies only to allies of the empire. “Israel”, a clandestine nuclear power outside the NPT, with an atomic arsenal that has never been inspected, remains untouched. Iran, by contrast, is required to submit completely. That is the double standard that sustains the current international system.

Sanctions play a central role in this hybrid war. They are not legal instruments, but weapons of collective punishment, used to strangle the Iranian economy, generate social suffering, and attempt to produce internal fractures.

Washington uses civilian suffering as a bargaining tool, hoping to force political concessions that it would never obtain under normal circumstances. It is a form of economic warfare that openly violates the most elementary principles of international law.

When the US attempts to expand the agenda of the negotiations to include Iran’s missile programme and defensive capability, it reveals its intentions even more clearly. Asking a country to negotiate its own defence is equivalent to demanding prior surrender.

No sovereign power would accept such an imposition. Iran has firmly rejected this manoeuvre, making it clear that its defensive capability is not under negotiation and never will be.

Iranian distrust does not arise from ideological paranoia, but from concrete historical experience. The United States unilaterally withdrew from the previous nuclear agreement, dismantled multilateral commitments, and, in 2025, went so far as to bomb peaceful Iranian nuclear facilities during ongoing negotiations.

This record renders any demand for “trust” on the part of Washington laughable. Imperialism does not inspire trust. It inspires caution and preparation.

Even so, Iran negotiates. And this point is central. It negotiates because it is a responsible state, aware of the gravity of the regional scenario, and willing to seek structured solutions. It accepts verification, accepts technical commitments, accepts dialogue. But it resists, and will continue to resist, because it is sovereign. To negotiate does not mean to kneel.

As repeatedly stated by the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatullah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, Iran does not build its foreign policy under threat, nor does it accept agreements imposed in the shadow of aircraft carriers.

Iranian diplomacy walks side by side with deterrence because recent history has shown, brutally, that unilateral concessions to imperialism do not produce peace, only new aggressions.

What is unfolding in Geneva, therefore, is not a technical debate about centrifuges or enrichment percentages. It is a chapter in the structural crisis of American imperial power, which can no longer impose its will without resorting to brute force and blackmail.

It is also a desperate attempt to preserve the regional supremacy of “Israel”, now shaken by the resistance of the peoples, and by the military and political failure of the Zionist project.

Ultimately, this is a historical choice: sovereignty or submission. The United States acts as the diplomatic arm of the Zionist regime, attempting to impose on Iran what it never demands of “Israel”: limits, inspections and obedience. Iran negotiates because it is responsible. But it resists because it is sovereign.

February 23, 2026 - Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | Iran, Israel, United States, Zionism