Iran President Pezeshkian Declares Missile Programme Is Completely Off the Table in Any Agreement With the United States

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has issued one of his most emphatic foreign policy statements to date, categorically declaring that the Islamic Republic's missile programme is not a part of the 14-point memorandum of understanding reached with the United States and that it will remain outside the scope of any future diplomatic arrangement as well. The declaration, made during a press conference in Islamabad, Pakistan, during an official state visit, signals a firm and deliberate red line drawn by Tehran even as the two nations navigate a complex and fragile diplomatic track following years of hostility.

The remarks came at a moment of acute geopolitical sensitivity. Weeks after the United States and Iran concluded preliminary technical discussions in Switzerland — discussions that formed the backbone of the 14-point MoU — questions had been swirling among analysts, regional governments, and international observers about how far the agreement extended in scope. The answer, according to Pezeshkian himself, is clear: Iran's missiles are not on the negotiating table, and they never will be.

Speaking at a news conference in Pakistan's capital Islamabad on Tuesday, President Masoud Pezeshkian was unequivocal. According to footage shared by the Iranian state broadcaster, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, the president stated that the discussion over Iran's missile capabilities does not feature anywhere in the current MoU and affirmed it never would.

He did not stop at a procedural clarification. Pezeshkian went further by offering a frank strategic justification for why Iran will never surrender its missile capabilities under any diplomatic framework. In his words, if Iran did not possess the missiles it uses for its defence, Israel and the United States would have devastated the country. It was a candid admission of Iran's threat perception and a direct articulation of the doctrinal logic that underlies the country's military posture. The missile programme, in Iran's view, is not a bargaining chip. It is an existential shield.

This statement from Pezeshkian arrives with the weight of executive authority behind it. He is not a hardline ideologue but a moderate reformist-leaning president who came to power promising engagement with the outside world. That someone of his political profile would speak with such conviction on the missile issue underlines just how deeply embedded this position is across Iran's entire political spectrum. From conservatives to reformists, the defence of the missile programme represents a national consensus in Tehran.

To understand what Pezeshkian was reacting to, it is essential to understand what the MoU between Iran and the United States actually says — and what it conspicuously does not say.

Last week, the United States officially released the text of the document to the public. A senior US administration official read out the 14-point agreement, which, according to reporting by CNN, covers several significant but carefully defined areas. The provisions reportedly include measures related to reopening the Strait of Hormuz, easing certain financial restrictions on Iran, and outlining expectations for future rounds of technical negotiations concerning Iran's nuclear programme.

Crucially, when analysts and journalists examined the published text closely, one major absence stood out: the document contains no language whatsoever restricting Iran's missile programme or its broader conventional defence capabilities. The only weapons-related provision explicitly mentioned in the MoU is Iran's commitment not to procure or develop nuclear weapons. That single clause captures the outer limit of what the agreement attempts to address in the military domain.

Everything else — the ballistic missiles, the advanced drones, the precision-guided munitions that Iran has been developing and deploying for over two decades — falls entirely outside the written scope of the agreement.

The timing and location of Pezeshkian's remarks are not coincidental. Pakistan and Iran share a historically complex but strategically important relationship, bound by geography, faith, cultural ties, and at times, deep friction. Pezeshkian's visit to Islamabad was focused on strengthening bilateral relations and discussing regional security developments at a critical juncture for the broader Middle East.

By making these comments from Pakistani soil, Pezeshkian was not only addressing a domestic Iranian audience but also signalling to the wider Muslim world and to regional governments that Iran's strategic posture has not softened in exchange for diplomatic engagement with Washington. The message was calibrated: Iran is willing to talk, willing to manage tensions, willing to allow the Strait of Hormuz to remain open, but it will not disarm, dismantle, or diminish its missile capabilities under any circumstances.

For Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state that maintains its own calculations around regional deterrence, the message resonated in a context both countries understand implicitly. Defence sovereignty, in the language of both nations, is non-negotiable.

One of the more remarkable dimensions of this story is how the US position on Iran's missile programme has evolved, and how sharply it contrasts with where it began.

When the Trump administration first signalled its military posture toward Iran earlier this year, the missile programme was presented as one of the central justifications for any potential military action. Curbing Iran's ability to develop and deploy ballistic missiles was framed as a core strategic objective, not merely a negotiating point. Iran's missiles were described as a threat to US allies, US forces in the region, and regional stability more broadly.

Yet by the time of the G7 summit in France last week, the American position had undergone a striking transformation. President Donald Trump, speaking publicly at the summit, remarked that missiles are not the problem. That phrase, simple and declarative, represented a dramatic walk-back from the earlier hardline framing.

This shift has significant implications. It suggests that the US, in the course of diplomatic back-and-forth, conceded the missile issue in exchange for progress on other fronts — most likely the nuclear question and the security of key maritime passages. Whether this concession was strategic pragmatism or a more fundamental recalibration of US priorities in the Middle East remains a subject of active debate in foreign policy circles.

Iran's missile capabilities have been decades in the making. Beginning in the aftermath of the devastating eight-year war with Iraq, during which Iranian cities were struck by Scud missiles while the international community largely looked away, Tehran drew a singular and lasting conclusion: Iran could not depend on the world for its security. It had to build that security itself.

What followed was a methodical investment in indigenous missile technology. Today, Iran possesses one of the most diverse and capable missile arsenals in the Middle East, encompassing short-range, medium-range, and long-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and precision-guided projectile systems. These assets have been used operationally, not merely as deterrents on paper. Iran launched direct missile strikes against Israeli territory in 2024, a moment that demonstrated both the capability and the willingness to deploy it.

The programme also provides Iran with a force multiplication effect beyond its conventional military limitations. Facing a technological gap with the United States and a qualitative gap with Israel in terms of air power, Iran has compensated by investing in ground-launched strike capabilities that are difficult to intercept entirely and can impose real costs on adversaries.

Pezeshkian's statement, therefore, is not just political posturing. It reflects a security doctrine that has been built over four decades, hardened by real conflict experience, and embedded in the institutional memory of the Islamic Republic's military and strategic establishment.

The MoU between Washington and Tehran, while not a final or comprehensive nuclear deal, represents the most concrete progress in Iran-US relations since the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which collapsed after the United States withdrew from it in 2018 under Trump's first term.

The current agreement's focus on Iran's nuclear programme — specifically the commitment not to develop or procure nuclear weapons — keeps the central concern of non-proliferation at the heart of diplomatic engagement. The Strait of Hormuz provisions address the immediate economic concern of global oil markets, which are acutely sensitive to any disruption in that critical waterway through which roughly 20 percent of the world's oil supply passes.

The financial restrictions element suggests that Iran may gain some relief from the suffocating sanctions architecture that has battered its economy for years, though the specifics of any easing remain subject to further technical negotiations.

What the agreement does not do is attempt to resolve every contested dimension of Iran's military posture in one document. That, diplomats would argue, is both realistic and pragmatic. Attempting to include the missile question would almost certainly have collapsed the talks entirely, given the categorical position that Iranian officials — from the president downward — have expressed.

The region is watching this diplomatic moment with a mixture of cautious interest and deep anxiety. For Gulf Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Iran's missile capability has long been a source of existential concern. Any agreement that leaves that capability intact — and that includes language effectively legitimising it by omitting any restrictions — is viewed with considerable unease in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

For Israel, the situation is even more fraught. Israeli officials have consistently argued that any deal with Iran that does not address its missile programme is fundamentally insufficient. The Israeli position holds that missiles are the delivery mechanism that makes every other Iranian capability — including the nuclear dimension — more threatening. From Jerusalem's vantage point, leaving the missile question out of any agreement is not a minor compromise. It is a strategic failure.

Yet from Tehran's perspective, and arguably from the perspective of diplomatic realism, the question is whether a less-than-comprehensive deal is better than no deal at all. Pezeshkian's government, inheriting an economy under extreme pressure, appears to have calculated that engaging on the nuclear question while firmly protecting the missile programme is the most achievable and sustainable diplomatic outcome available.

The conclusion of the 14-point MoU is explicitly described as a framework for further technical talks, not as an end point. Future rounds of negotiation are expected to delve more deeply into the specifics of Iran's nuclear enrichment activities, its relationship with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the conditions under which financial restrictions might be progressively eased.

What is already apparent from Pezeshkian's statement in Islamabad is that the missile question will not enter those negotiations. Iran has drawn that line firmly and publicly. Any future US administration or diplomatic team that attempts to reintroduce the missile file as a negotiating item will face the same categorical rejection — perhaps even more forcefully articulated.

The path forward, if there is one, runs through the nuclear file. And in a diplomatic landscape defined by decades of mistrust, contested interpretations, and broken agreements, even progress on that narrower front represents something that neither side has managed to sustain for very long.

For now, the 14-point MoU stands as a tentative but real step away from the edge of armed conflict. Whether it can be built upon, whether the technical talks will yield durable agreements, and whether both sides can manage their respective domestic political pressures long enough to make progress — these are the questions that will define the next chapter of one of the most consequential diplomatic relationships in global affairs.

President Pezeshkian has made one thing unmistakably clear: in that next chapter, Iran's missiles will not be characters in the story. They are, and will remain, off the page entirely.