Iran president’s high-wire appeal for diplomacy buffeted by winds of war

Masoud Pezeshkian calls for new era of cooperation' in UN speech while hemmed in by escalating tensions and critics at home

On his first visit to the US, Iran's new president has spoken of a new era of cooperation" with the west. It is an offer that intrigued diplomats, but left them struck by the constraints - ideological, internal and geopolitical - standing in the way of a substantive change in relations.

Masoud Pezeshkian came to New York for his first UN general assembly since his election asking the west to look at Iran again - largely by challenging the double standards that led to its silence about the massacres in Gaza. He has insisted Israel and the US, not Tehran, were the region's troublemakers.