MADRID – The online interview between Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and American journalist Tucker Carlson in July 2025 goes far beyond a media spectacle. It becomes a political act of high symbolic voltage. 

At a time when West Asia teeters on the edge, and the Western narrative continues to reduce Iran’s complexity to a monolithic threat, Pezeshkian’s appearance on Carlson’s platform—one of the most watched and hotly debated political shows worldwide—creates a rupture in the usual frameworks of interpretation. It’s not merely a testimony; it is a disruption of the dominant narrative, an invitation to nuance and critical reflection.

This analysis aims to unpack the meaning of Pezeshkian’s intervention, the context in which it occurs, and the broader significance of the interview as a symptom of the crisis afflicting contemporary international politics. It does so by acknowledging the legitimacy of Iran’s concerns and the importance of hearing its voice, without falling into apologetics or demonization.

The interview takes place amid a volatile backdrop: Israeli and American attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities, followed by Tehran’s military response. The regional climate is defined by uncertainty, fears of escalation, and a sense that diplomacy has been supplanted by brute force. 

Against this backdrop, Pezeshkian emerges as a leader who, without sacrificing firmness, emphasizes dialogue and negotiation. His insistence that Iran “has never started a war” and “does not want any war to continue” operates both as a declaration of principle and a strategic effort to dismantle the image of Iran as a destabilizing power. The president presents himself as a rational actor, open to engagement, yet deeply shaped by a structural mistrust of the West.

Pezeshkian’s narrative pivots on three key axes: sovereignty, transparency, and betrayal. The defense of national sovereignty is not empty rhetoric, but a response to decades of foreign interference, sanctions, and threats. In the face of accusations of opacity, the president underscores that Iran has allowed IAEA inspections at all facilities under its supervision and has been willing to negotiate even under extreme pressure. His claim that Israel has used inspection intelligence to carry out sabotage and targeted assassinations introduces the element of betrayal—one that, from the Iranian perspective, justifies caution and resistance to further openness.

Far from being a mere pretext for confrontation, the nuclear issue becomes the terrain on which the dignity and autonomy of the Iranian state are at stake. Pezeshkian maintains that Iran does not seek nuclear weapons, citing the religious decree forbidding their development. He notes that the destruction of monitoring equipment following recent attacks has complicated verification, but not Iran’s commitment to transparency. Here, Iran does not present itself as a country evading accountability, but as a state demanding assurances that international monitoring mechanisms will not be weaponized against it. Its willingness to resume negotiations and allow oversight—provided that minimum conditions of trust are restored—amounts to a call for rethinking Iran’s relationship with the international community on the basis of mutual respect and non-interference.

Pezeshkian’s discourse on defending the homeland is far removed from any glorification of conflict. When he declares, “We are prepared to defend our people, our independence, and the freedom of our homeland to the last breath, and we do not fear death,” he invokes a rhetoric of resistance that resonates with Iran’s political culture of martyrdom, yet does not translate into a celebration of war. Rather, it reflects a political ethic in which the defense of the homeland is both a right and a moral duty in the face of an existential threat.

Pezeshkian laments the “shame and sorrow” of those who seek to destabilize the region, suggesting that the true responsibility for violence lies with external actors perpetuating cycles of war and revenge. In this framework, defending the homeland is inseparable from a critique of interventionism and a demand for dignified, sovereign treatment.

Throughout the interview, the difficulty of trusting the United States and its allies looms large. Pezeshkian asserts that “we could very easily resolve our differences and conflicts with the United States through dialogue and conversation,” but that recent experiences have eroded Washington’s credibility as a negotiating partner. 

This mistrust is not merely situational—it is the product of decades of interference, sanctions, coups, and broken promises. The latest round of nuclear negotiations, mediated by Oman, is presented as a missed opportunity, thwarted by Israeli and American offensives. In this light, peace constantly appears deferred by the logic of force and suspicion, with any diplomatic progress vulnerable to violent disruption.

In this setting, Tucker Carlson functions as a media intermediary whose relevance lies more in the reach of his platform than in his ability to shift the terms of the conversation. Carlson does not act as an apologist for Iran, nor as a direct adversary; he represents a strain of American conservatism critical of U.S. interventionist wars. Yet his skepticism toward American foreign policy does not necessarily translate into openness toward Iranian positions. 

During the interview, he assumes the role of a distant, at times wary, interlocutor, posing sharp questions and occasionally reproducing the familiar frameworks of suspicion that dominate Western media discourse. While his format enables the Iranian voice to reach a broad audience—one rarely exposed to alternative perspectives—the dynamic remains constrained by the logic of confrontation and surveillance that shapes U.S.-Iranian relations.

The conversation between Tucker Carlson and Masoud Pezeshkian is, ultimately, a mirror of the tensions and ambivalences that permeate today’s international order. More than a clash of irreconcilable positions, the interview becomes a space where the paradoxes of sovereignty and intervention, transparency and mistrust, victim and perpetrator are exposed—but not resolved.

By constructing his narrative around national dignity and conditional openness, Pezeshkian not only challenges the usual demonization frameworks but also exposes the limits and possibilities of diplomacy in an environment shaped by structural distrust. The interview offers no solutions, no synthesis—but it does reveal the urgent need to rethink the terms of engagement between the West and Iran, away from automatic reactions and simplistic dichotomies. At stake in this exchange is not just the image of a country, but the very possibility of imagining an international politics less driven by force and more open to the complexity of the other.

Ultimately, this analysis underscores the importance of careful listening and resisting hasty judgments, especially in contexts marked by polarization and mistrust. A commitment to diplomacy and mutual recognition is not just a slogan—it is a necessary condition for any meaningful resolution of international conflicts. Far from occupying a peripheral position, the Iranian perspective is essential to understanding the current and future dynamics of the region.