Fresh twists and confusion once again shroud US-Iran tensions; this time, the tension is rooted in misinterpretation. "For the first time, the Iranians have said they're prepared to negotiate on their missile program," US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told a Cabinet meeting July 16, expressing hope that a deal could be struck with Tehran to keep it away from a nuclear weapon.

If true, Pompeo's claim would have demonstrated a significant policy shift by the Islamic Republic, which has time and again declared its missile program as a nonnegotiable red line. To reaffirm that Iran is still digging in its heels, the country's mission in the United Nations was quick to react. "Iran's missiles … are absolutely and under no condition negotiable with anyone or any country, period," tweeted the mission's media bureau chief, Alireza Miryousefi, in New York.

The Iranian diplomat traced Pompeo's interpretation to a now-revised report by the Associated Press. The report described a comment by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Iran's ballistic missiles as a suggestion that the program could be up for negotiations with the United States. "If the US wants to talk about missiles, it should stop selling weapons, including missiles, to regional states," Zarif had told NBC News in reference to multibillion-dollar arms deals the United States has been clinching with Iran's major regional adversaries Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Zarif's "hypothetical" remarks triggered a plethora of political and semantic debates from across Iranian social media. Reading between the lines, political commentator Reza Nasri noted that by raising the issue of Washington's arms sales to its Middle East allies, Zarif was seeking to contextualize Tehran's missiles with "the realities in the region," elucidate the logic behind the program and put into question the "irrelevance" of demands on the Islamic Republic to disarm.