Khamenei, 56, is believed to have suffered horrific injuries in the Feb. 28 airstrikes that killed his father at the start of the US war against Iran.
Page A2From§Eachthe late evening edition — 24 September 2026
Iranian president calls uranium hidden in a mountain 'not a big deal,' says unseen Supreme Leader 'completely' healthy
As it ran on the front
My nephew is in his second year of law school, and I called him because I wanted to know what a word is worth. He's not a nuclear engineer. He's not finished with contracts yet, either. But he spends his days learning what "voluntary" means in an agreement, what "temporary" means in an order, what happens to a sentence that promises everything and specifies nothing. I trust that more than I trust a briefing.
I told him what I'd read. The president of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, sat down with Fox News on Thursday and told Bret Baier that the enriched uranium his country has stored inside a mountain is "not a big deal." Those are his words. I wrote them down because I wanted to get them right, and because a mountain full of enriched uranium being not a big deal is the kind of sentence you want to read twice.…
…(cont) My nephew asked what happened next. I told him: in that same round of interviews, Pezeshkian also said Iran would submit its nuclear program to verification and dilute the enriched uranium to ease tensions. He's offering to water it down. I asked my nephew — if a thing is genuinely not a big deal, do people usually offer to dilute it? He told me that wasn't a legal question, that was just a question. I told him I was working on it.
I have a car in the driveway that's needed a fan belt since Tuesday, and I stood next to it while I read him the next part, because it seemed like news you take standing up. Back in 2021, Iran told the International Atomic Energy Agency it intended to enrich uranium to 20 percent, after a law passed following the assassination of a nuclear scientist. That same year, Iran switched on a new line of advanced centrifuges at Natanz, which it later confirmed violated the deal meant to prevent exactly that. Has "not a big deal" needed a second sentence before?
Then there's the other reassurance, the one with nothing to do with uranium. Reporters asked Pezeshkian about the Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who nobody has seen or heard from in about a month. Pezeshkian said he is "completely" healthy. I want to be fair to the word, so I copied it exactly the way the paper printed it, quote marks and all, because I didn't want to be the one adding the emphasis.
I apologize for going back to the file again, but here's what else is in it. In March, Iran named an Interim Leadership Council to govern alongside the president, after the previous Supreme Leader — Khamenei's father — was assassinated. In August, state media reported that Mojtaba Khamenei had met with Pezeshkian in July, describing it as his first publicly reported meeting since taking over, and released a video to go with it, because until then there hadn't been one.
My nephew, who has not taken the bar exam and would want me to say so, told me that in his contracts class they're taught not to trust an absolute unless somebody can show their work. He said a good lawyer doesn't argue with a word like that. A good lawyer asks what it's covering.
Hold on — one more thing, before you go. The mountain comes with an offer to verify it and a paper trail back to 2021. The man they say is fine has one meeting, in July, and one video, because there wasn't one before it. Which of those two would you say we actually know is completely?
“You don't go on two different networks in the same week insisting a mountain full of enriched uranium is 'no big deal' unless somebody's worried it is one — that's not calm, that's damage control. The man supposedly steering the country hasn't been seen in a month, and he's still 'completely' fine, no video, just the word. When the uranium and the boss get the identical soft answer, that's one script, not two stories, and the stakes on it are a region that already had a war this year.”
“The dilution offer is the win here — that's maximum pressure paying off, full stop. The 'not a big deal' line, sure, that's just — okay, I'm not touching that one. And whether their Supreme Leader's fine is an internal matter, none of our business, which — wait, why do I sound like their press office?”
The receipts
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian claims Tehran will submit its nuclear program to verification and dilute enriched uranium to ease tensions.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said the fact that his country harbors enriched uranium underground in a mountain is “not a big deal.” Pezeshkian made the comment in a Fox News interview on Special Report with Bret Baier on Thursday night, telling the host that Iran does not want a nuclear weapon “at all.” Following that […]
· Iranian state media reports that Iranian supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei met president Masoud Pezeshkian in July, his first publicly reported meeting since taking over, amidst ongoing speculation abou from the morgue, 9 Aug 2026
· Iran appoints Ayatollah Alireza Arafi to the Interim Leadership Council that assumed authority following the assassination of supreme leader Ali Khamenei, with the body set to govern alongside preside from the morgue, 1 Mar 2026
· Iranian President Hassan Rouhani inaugurates a series of advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear facility, revealing that Iran had violated in kind the Joint Comprehensive Plan o from the morgue, 10 Apr 2021
· The International Atomic Energy Agency says Iran has notified it of its intention to enrich uranium to 20% purity, in accordance with a law recently passed by the Islamic Consultative Assembly. Iran d from the morgue, 1 Jan 2021
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.