TEHRAN — Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian said Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei has ordered officials to end the state of “neither war nor peace” with the United States, in remarks at a ceremony in Tehran reported on Monday, November 9, by the Tasnim News Agency and ISNA. “The Supreme Leader ordered us to end the situation of neither war nor peace. We can talk with dignity and end the issue with dignity,” Pezeshkian said, adding: “We will not surrender to force and bullying.”

Source: Tasnim News Agency, Nov 9 2026

Feb 28the date the US and Israel launched the war on Iran, now in its ninth month
48 hoursthe time Iran says Strait of Hormuz security could be restored in, if Washington meets its demands — Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei, Monday
2 daysthe length of Iran's standing proposal to resolve the immediate crisis, which Tehran says remains on the table
72ndanniversary of Iran's Pegah dairy company, the Tehran ceremony where Pezeshkian spoke — ISNA

Pezeshkian was speaking at a ceremony marking the 72nd anniversary of the establishment of the Iranian Milk Industries Company, known as Pegah, attended by the company's management and employees, ISNA reported. He said Iranians are “people of dialogue and negotiation” and that logic dictates securing the country's rights through dialogue rather than war — while insisting that any talks rest on justice and equal terms. He also pointed back to his September address to the UN General Assembly, where he had made the same case for engagement based on fairness and mutual respect.

Source: ISNA via ANI / DevDiscourse, Nov 9 2026

A new instruction, building on an earlier mandate

Monday's statement goes a step beyond what Pezeshkian disclosed a week earlier, on November 2, when he said Khamenei had handed the government authority and powers to pursue dialogue. The new wording is an instruction to close the limbo itself — neither continued war nor an open-ended stalemate — rather than only permission to talk. Read the earlier report: Khamenei's mandate for talks, disclosed Nov 2

The foreign ministry pressed the same message on Monday. Spokesperson Esmail Baghaei, at his weekly press conference, said Iran's two-day proposal to resolve the crisis “remains on the table” and that if the United States meets Iran's demands, “the region will see positive developments within two days, and security will return to the Strait of Hormuz.” Tehran's demands, he said, include lifting the economic blockade on Iran and ending hostilities on all fronts, and must be met before negotiations resume. Baghaei dismissed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's characterisation of the demands as irrational, calling them “entirely logical” and describing the US attack on Iran in the middle of earlier negotiations as illegal and criminal — Iran's stated position, attributed here as Tehran presents it.

Source: ISNA via ANI / DevDiscourse, Nov 9 2026

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, meanwhile, cautioned that diplomacy has slowed in recent days. He said the results of the US midterm elections had “shocked” the mediators' shuttle diplomacy and that Tehran needed to wait for conditions to become favourable again for mediators to resume their visits — a reminder that the channel through Qatar and other intermediaries, not any direct table, is still how Washington and Tehran are talking.

Source: ISNA via ANI / DevDiscourse, Nov 9 2026

The same day, the other side of the table was in Washington

Pezeshkian's remarks landed on the day Qatar's prime minister — Tehran and Washington's chief intermediary — was meeting President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance at the White House, the meeting Awaaz Punjab previewed on Sunday. Trump said on Sunday, in a CNN phone interview, that fresh US strikes on Iran were “highly unlikely” if negotiations progressed toward a strong agreement, while also saying US forces had identified targets including power plants and bridges — remarks attributed to Trump himself. Read: Trump to meet Qatar's prime minister at the White House

The gap between the two capitals remains wide, and Monday brought a warning from the Gulf itself: senior Emirati official Anwar Gargash, in an address in Abu Dhabi reported by Reuters, said a comprehensive US-Iran settlement appeared difficult and the region should prepare for a prolonged period of uncertainty — a story Awaaz Punjab published earlier on Monday. Rubio has likewise said he does not see a diplomatic breakthrough as imminent. For the lakhs of Punjabi and Indian workers across the Gulf, the stalemate Pezeshkian described is not abstract: it is the closed-or-threatened Strait of Hormuz, the shipping and oil routes their jobs and remittances depend on, and the risk that a failed negotiation round becomes another round of strikes on Gulf states, as happened earlier this year.

Source: Tasnim News Agency, Nov 9 2026

What is solid

  • Pezeshkian said Khamenei has ordered an end to the “neither war nor peace” state and that Iran can negotiate with dignity but will not surrender to force — Tasnim; ISNA via ANI; Anadolu
  • Baghaei said Monday that Iran's two-day proposal remains on the table and Hormuz security could return within 48 hours if the US meets Tehran's demands, including lifting the blockade — ISNA/IRNA via ANI
  • Araghchi said US election results had slowed mediators' shuttle diplomacy in recent days — ISNA via ANI
  • No new agreement, ceasefire or direct US-Iran meeting was announced by either side on Monday — all reports

What is only claimed

  • Whether Khamenei's instruction changes anything on the ground: Tehran presents it as a directive to conclude the matter; Washington has not publicly responded to the statement, and Rubio has called Iran's preconditions unacceptable — the two positions are unreconciled
  • What ending the limbo would require first: Iran says its demands (blockade lifted, hostilities ended) must be met before talks resume; the US says strikes stay unlikely only if talks progress toward a strong agreement — each side conditions its move on the other's

What happens next

The immediate test is in Washington, where the Qatari prime minister's meetings with Trump and Vance will show whether the mediator can carry anything back to Tehran that meets its stated preconditions — or whether, as Gargash warned, the region settles into the prolonged uncertainty of a war that is neither resumed nor ended. Pezeshkian's statement raises the political cost of that limbo inside Iran: the Supreme Leader has now publicly been said to have ordered it ended, so a return to open-ended stalemate would sit against his own instruction.