Iran’s foreign minister chose the weekend after our midterms to issue a threat to the United States, and I want you to read it in his own words.
“American voters have made their choice. Time for the White House to make its own,” Abbas Araghchi wrote on X at midday Sunday. “Our 2-day proposal stands: meet the requirements, including end to war on all fronts, and you will see results. Or choose war, and see our alert and battle-hardened Warriors rain down hell.”
Late Sunday night he posted again, this time trying to drive a wedge between Americans and Israel. “POTUS clearly recognizes that the vast majority of Americans are disgusted with Israel,” Araghchi wrote. “Americans are evidently sick and tired of Israel bamboozling US administrations into Forever Wars.”
American voters have made their choice. Time for the White House to make its own. Our 2-day proposal stands: meet the requirements, including end to war on all fronts, and you will see results. Or choose war, and see our alert and battle-hardened Warriors rain down hell.
— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) November 8, 2026
Araghchi is using our election results to attempt to make Washington to accept Iran’s terms.
Rubio’s answer
Secretary of State Marco Rubio answered on Sunday, speaking to reporters at Homestead Air Reserve Base in Florida before leaving for a G7 foreign ministers’ meeting in Paris.
“You have a number of countries that continue to engage them with different ideas, but I wouldn’t say we’re on the verge of a breakthrough,” Rubio said, according to The Times of Israel and Anadolu. “Right now, it hasn’t been very productive because the Iranian demands are simply not just unacceptable, but in some cases, outrageous and ridiculous, and really not realistic.”
He did not list the demands. Tehran has previously called for an end to the U.S. naval blockade and the lifting of sanctions.
Rubio said the United States acts defensively. “If there’s a clear and present threat to shipping or to our forces in the region, we have a right to defend ourselves,” he said. He also argued that keeping Iran from a nuclear weapon should remain a bipartisan priority.
President Trump struck a softer note. Hindustan Times reported that he told CNN in a phone interview that further strikes were “highly unlikely” if talks mediated by Qatar and Pakistan make progress.
Three more men hanged
While Araghchi was lecturing Americans about war, his government was hanging its own people.
Iran executed Hassan Dioband, Hamid Kazemi and Reza Zanganeh, three men arrested after January’s anti-government protests in Karaj, the BBC reported Sunday, citing the state news agency Tasnim. The regime accused them of armed unrest and of working on behalf of Israel, the United States and “hostile groups.”
Those protests began over the cost of living and grew into nationwide demonstrations. Iranian authorities reported more than 3,000 deaths and blamed “terrorist acts.” The BBC said it received multiple accounts of security forces opening fire on unarmed protesters. Amnesty International counted at least 2,159 executions in Iran last year, the highest figure it has recorded since 1981.
The bottom line
I do not want an endless war, and neither do most Americans. Gas prices are real, and so is the toll this conflict took at the ballot box. But Tehran is wrong if it thinks a change in Congress means America will accept terms written by the same men who hang protesters and promise “hell.”
A regime that kills its own citizens for demanding a better life cannot be trusted with a nuclear program, and it should not be handed relief from the blockade in exchange for a two-day ultimatum.
Rubio is right to call these demands what they are. The President should keep the door to a real deal open, keep the pressure on, and make clear that no American election changes the answer to an Iranian bomb.