Leadership Quote by Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

A hard-edged sentence like this is less a confession of paranoia than a bid to redefine reality on Rafsanjani's terms: trust is off the table because the other side already chose rupture. In five clipped beats, he relocates agency. Iran is not the party sulking; the U.S. is the party that "cut the ties". That framing matters in a political environment where blame is currency and victimhood can be strategically useful.

Rafsanjani, a veteran power broker of the Islamic Republic, often worked the seam between ideology and pragmatism. So the line reads like a two-level message. On the surface: a justification for resisting engagement, sanctions pressure, or backchannel overtures. Underneath: a warning to domestic rivals and a reminder to the public that any softness toward Washington risks looking naive, even traitorous. By presenting mistrust as rational and reactive, he inoculates himself against charges that diplomacy is capitulation.

The phrase "goodwill" is doing quiet rhetorical work. It concedes that American policy is not just hostile in outcome but unreliable in intent; even friendly gestures can be dismissed as tactical. That preempts the most persuasive pro-dialogue argument: that intentions can change faster than structures. "They have cut the ties" also implies a past relationship worth mourning, which lets him gesture at lost normalcy without endorsing the West. It's grievance packaged as discipline: a leader translating geopolitical isolation into a moral posture, and using that posture to keep internal politics aligned under pressure.