Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian used a rare appearance on US soil Wednesday to strike a defiant tone at the United Nations, while also saying Tehran remained open to diplomacy. His speech, however, offered few details on a diplomatic path forward, despite a round of US-Iran talks the previous day.

What happened: Speaking to the UN General Assembly in New York, Pezeshkian took aim at the United States and Israel and defended Iran's military response in recent months, saying that regional disputes should be resolved solely by regional countries.

"We have been the victims of terrorism,” Pezeshkian said, referring to the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a US-Israeli strike in Tehran on Feb. 28 and and the bombing of a girls' school in the southern Iranian city of Mina the same day. He held up photographs of some of the more than 100 children killed in the attack alongside a photograph of Khamenei. 

A preliminary US intelligence assessment in March found that US forces were likely responsible for the Feb. 28 strike, but that the school was not intentionally targeted. An independent UN fact-finding mission reported this month that the US had failed to properly verify information before targeting the school and said that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the strike was a war crime.