Skip to content
You can now search across every topic, entity and event.What's new
European Energy Markets
27JUL

Ghalibaf says Iran will not fold

2 min read
09:24UTC

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran's parliamentary speaker and chief negotiator, listed US breaches on X on 8 July and wrote 'we don't fold', the first senior official to call the memorandum violated on the record.

← Back to Wind, not peace, sank the German sparkJump to analysis ↓
EconomicDeveloping
Key takeaway

Iran's negotiator has declared the memorandum violated, though the parliament he leads never ratified it.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of Iran's parliament and its chief negotiator, posted on X on Wednesday 8 July listing what he called US breaches of the memorandum: interference with Iran's Hormuz arrangements, threats of further strikes, reinstated oil sanctions and attacks on southern Iran. 'We don't fold,' he wrote, declaring an end to what he called an era of bullying and extortion 1. He is the first named senior official, beyond the foreign ministry spokesman, to declare the memorandum violated on the record, and his statement lands days after Donald Trump called the deal over .

What Ghalibaf calls violated the Majlis never ratified. Iran's parliament was never asked to vote the Islamabad memorandum through as a treaty, which is why hardline MPs Abootorabi and Nabavian are threatening an Article 77 constitutional complaint rather than a withdrawal motion 2. The complaint would target the government for binding Iran to a text parliament never approved. The escalation runs through the executive and through public statements, not the parliamentary record.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf is the speaker of Iran's parliament (the Majlis) and was Iran's lead negotiator on the ceasefire deal with the US, known as the Islamabad memorandum. He has now said publicly that the US broke that deal and that Iran will not back down. Separately, two hardline members of parliament are threatening to use a constitutional rule, Article 77, to argue the deal was never legally binding in the first place because parliament itself never voted on it. Together, these moves suggest Iran's political establishment is hardening its position, alongside its military.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

Article 77 of Iran's constitution requires the Majlis to ratify international treaties; the Islamabad memorandum was signed as an executive-level understanding, not a treaty, leaving hardline MPs Abootorabi and Nabavian a genuine constitutional lever to argue it never bound Iran domestically.

The succession crisis compounds the legal gap: with Mojtaba Khamenei absent from public view since his father's funeral and reportedly injured, no figure with unquestioned authority has stepped in to overrule Ghalibaf's reading of the memorandum, leaving the Majlis speaker's interpretation effectively unchallenged.

What could happen next?
  • Consequence

    If the Article 77 complaint advances, it gives Iran's negotiators formal domestic cover to abandon the memorandum's terms without appearing to break faith with Washington unilaterally.

Sources:bne IntelliNews
Mentions:Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf →Majlis →Article 51 →France →Donald Trump →Iran →Germany →US Senate →Tehran →Middle East Institute →Alex Vatanka →Mojtaba Khamenei →Islamabad →
First Reported In

Update #150 · Second US strike wave, first heavy toll

bne IntelliNews· 9 Jul 2026
Read original →
Causes and effects
This Event
Ghalibaf says Iran will not fold
With its chief negotiator now calling the memorandum violated, Tehran has taken its hardest public line since June, even though parliament never ratified the deal.
Led to
Trump declares the Iran deal over
Ghalibaf's public breach declaration follows Trump's statement that the deal was over.
Occurred 7 Jul 2026
Read story →
Different Perspectives
Slovakia
Slovakia
Slovakia says it dropped its hold-out on the 21st sanctions package only after Ursula von der Leyen personally signed written gas-price and supply guarantees. The Council of the European Union's own 17,238-character release on the package names neither Slovakia nor any guarantee, leaving Bratislava's account unconfirmed by the institutional record.
EU regulator on capacity mechanisms
EU regulator on capacity mechanisms
Brussels is watching Germany's StromVKG first 4.5 GW capacity auction move toward its 8 September bid deadline without a resolved state-aid clearance for the 9 GW 2026 programme's gas-plant subsidies. A negative spark spread this deep on cheap gas strengthens the case for subsidised dispatchable capacity, the same case still awaiting a state-aid ruling.
French power exporters
French power exporters
French day-ahead cleared EUR 41.13/MWh on Sunday 26 July, EUR 43.09 below Germany, on wind more than doubling and a demand trough, not on any nuclear recovery. The desk expects the discount to hold only as long as French wind and weekend demand repeat, not as a durable nuclear-cost advantage.
European gas storage operator
European gas storage operator
A storage operator stopped bidding for prompt TTF cargoes on 21 July, reading the strike-halt unwind as the start of a fuel-side correction rather than a floor. It expects the gap between prompt and forward gas to keep narrowing as the war premium continues leaving the curve.
German gas-fired power fleet
German gas-fired power fleet
German gas-fired plants cut output from 4.37 GW to 2.85 GW between 24 and 27 July, even as TTF fell 8 per cent, because below roughly minus EUR 40/MWh the fuel price stopped deciding dispatch. The fleet expects no relief until wind eases or StromVKG's first 4.5 GW auction adds capacity.
French industrial power consumers
French industrial power consumers
France's day-ahead discount to Germany has nearly closed as TTF and EUA rise together on both sides of the border, eroding the arbitrage French industry relied on through the summer. A standing negative spark removes the German demand buffer that kept that spread wide.