Iranian Hardliner Claims Negotiating Team Violated Supreme Leader's Instructions, Revealing 'Rift at the Top'

An Iranian hardline lawmaker who has opposed negotiations with the United States has claimed that the country's negotiating team violated instructions from the Supreme Leader.

Lawmaker Mahmoud Nabavian, who also serves as the deputy chair of the Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, appeared on Iranian state television on June 21, local time, claiming he had seen confidential letters from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei and accusing the negotiating team of abusing its authority.

He mentioned that Ayatollah Khamenei had set 11 conditions, including receiving compensation from the United States, maintaining the right to enrich uranium, lifting sanctions, unfreezing Iranian assets, and exercising full sovereignty by immediately imposing tolls on vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.

He added that Ayatollah Khamenei ordered that the Strait of Hormuz should only be reopened when the United States agrees to pay compensation.

Regarding the first round of talks to end the war held with the United States in Islamabad, Pakistan, on April 12, Nabavian claimed that Ayatollah Khamenei sent a letter to the negotiating team instructing them to halt the talks because the agreed terms were completely different from the intended direction and the conditions of the meetings.

However, he claimed that the negotiating team ignored Ayatollah Khamenei's instructions, made concessions to the United States, and pushed forward with the negotiations.

He criticized that before the negotiations began in Switzerland, several conditions should have been met first—including the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon, the unfreezing of Iranian assets, the lifting of the maritime blockade, and the temporary lifting of sanctions—but these conditions were not fulfilled.

He went on to ask, "Does this mean the public should not know what the Imam's (Supreme Leader's) orders were, and why the working-level officials disobeyed those orders?"

As he continued to make such hardline claims while U.S.-Iran negotiations were beginning in Switzerland on the same day, the host cut him off and ended the interview, saying, "Thank you for your comments. Please stay tuned."

The British daily newspaper The Guardian reported that "within an hour of the interview being cut off due to censorship, the archive of the interview was deleted and a senior broadcasting official resigned," adding that Lawmaker Nabavian could face prosecution or lose his seat in parliament.

The newspaper further reported, "Figures from the camp of chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who is in Switzerland, demanded that the identity of the leaker be uncovered, while a spokesperson for the negotiating team dismissed the claims as 'old and distorted.'"

The claims he made during the interview align with the stance of anti-American hardliners within Iran.

It appears to be true that there are internal divisions within Iran regarding the negotiations with the United States.

Even Ayatollah Khamenei, the pinnacle of Iran's ruling system, recently stated in a letter to the Iranian president that although his views on the outcome of the negotiations differed from the president's, he had delegated the decision to the president's judgment under certain conditions, highlighting how opinions have split within the Iranian leadership amid the rapidly changing situation.

Therefore, the confidential letters "disclosed" by Lawmaker Nabavian may only be a portion of Ayatollah Khamenei's various correspondences stripped of context, or they might not be the most up-to-date versions.

In particular, in the hardliner-dominated Iranian parliament, the voices of "ultra-hardliners" who reject negotiations with the United States altogether have become prominent, leading Western media to interpret the situation as internal strife or an internal power struggle in Iran.

The Guardian analyzed that "the episode, apart from revealing tensions at the top of government in near real time, also appears to show that the supreme leader has been far more directly involved in the negotiations than previously known."

Regarding the role of the newly appointed Ayatollah Khamenei during the war, conflicting analyses exist, ranging from claims that he has lost actual power to the military to interpretations that he deeply influences key national policy decisions.

(Photo: Captured from Iranian State Television, Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.