Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said he would continue in office for as long as he was alive, IRGC-linked media reported on May 31.

"As long as I have life in my body, I will continue," Pezeshkian said at a cabinet session. "Either we manage the arena with strength, or we become martyrs," he said. "We must be on the scene and manage the scene," Pezeshkian added in his most direct response to the news from abroad that he was planning on stepping down.

The claim, attributed by a foreign outlet, Iran International, operated from Britain and funded in part by Israeli Foreign Ministry funding through its parent company, drew a wave of responses from government figures denying it.

The deputy for communications and information at the president's office wrote on the social platform X that the report was rumour-mongering and a continuation of earlier media games, saying Pezeshkian would not step back from serving the people and that hopes of breaking Iranians' national unity would fail.

Government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani wrote on X that the Pezeshkian administration had shown in difficult days that it stood with the people, and that it was working to resolve the country's problems and improve people's lives. Iran would move forward with national solidarity and cohesion, she said.

Elias Hazrati, head of the government's information council, said the rumour of the president's resignation had no basis in reality and had been denied many times before. Pezeshkian was pursuing the country's affairs and serving the people with full effort, he wrote on X on the evening of May 31.

Hazrati said some foreign media and aligned networks had raised the resignation rumour several times in recent months. The designers of such reports appeared to be seeking to create despair, division and a rift in national cohesion rather than to inform, and would fail, he said.

Rouzbeh Kordouni, an adviser to the minister and director general at the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts, wrote that the claim was inconsistent with Pezeshkian's political character and conduct, arguing the president had never sought to make himself the centre of attention or to treat politics as a stage for personal display.

The country remained in a turbulent post-war environment 40 days after the US and Israeli war against Iran, Kordouni said, with society needing stability, trust, cohesion and continuity of management more than ever.