Araghchi may stay in New York until Wednesday (IRNA) or Tuesday (Tasnim). But any talks remain indirect, through intermediaries, and this week's fight in Tehran showed where the real line is: not about whether to negotiate with Washington, but about doing it face to face.

That Iran is still talking may seem encouraging, but the picture is more complicated.

First, keeping a channel open to Washington costs Tehran almost nothing, especially during UN General Assembly week, and it spares Tehran from being the side that ends diplomacy. That is not, in itself, evidence of flexibility. Neither is Tehran’s new proposal.

Second, indirect negotiations have a poor record on the hardest issues. In Vienna in 2021–2022, with Iran refusing to sit with the Americans, the talks stalled on the final, most sensitive questions. The JCPOA itself grew out of direct, secret talks in Oman in 2013.

So the only format Tehran can currently sell at home is the one least suited to resolving Hormuz and the other issues that months of mediated talks have failed to settle