27JUL

Khamenei backs deal, in language of leaving

3 min read

09:24UTC

Mojtaba Khamenei endorsed the US-Iran MOU in his first written message on 18 June, then branded the enemy's demands excessive and handed the deal's outcome to President Pezeshkian.

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Key takeaway

Permission to negotiate arrived in the language of permission to leave.

Mojtaba Khamenei broke a written silence on Thursday 18 June, the day after the signing, with his first message to the nation since taking office ¹. Unseen in public since 8 March and reachable only by sealed courier, Iran's Supreme Leader endorsed the US-Iran memorandum and stripped it of ideological weight in the same breath.

Future talks with the doshman, the enemy, "do not mean accepting its views", he wrote, and Iran will not yield to zeyadeh-khahi, excess demands. The original Farsi runs harder than the English summaries carried. Doshman is a formal designation in Iranian state discourse, not a turn of phrase, and its use signals that the negotiation is tolerated, not embraced.

Khamenei delegated accountability for the deal to President Masoud Pezeshkian, keeping his own name off the outcome. This is the leader his negotiators had told Washington approved the framework at the highest level . His authority rests on the Revolutionary Guard Corps rather than the clergy, and a written endorsement that brands the enemy's asks excessive is the cheapest way to satisfy hardliners while keeping the talks nominally alive. The same actor who approved the framework now frames its enforcement as overreach. The endorsement reads as permission to negotiate that doubles as permission to walk.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Iran's Supreme Leader is the most powerful person in the country, above even the elected president. After the peace deal was signed, Mojtaba Khamenei published a message on 18 June backing it. But his backing came with important conditions. Khamenei used the Farsi word for enemy to describe the US and said that talking to the enemy does not mean agreeing with it. He placed all responsibility for how the deal turns out on President Masoud Pezeshkian. Under the Iranian constitution, this means Pezeshkian carries the political cost if the deal fails, and Khamenei remains insulated. No previous Supreme Leader had used this liability-transfer formula for a major diplomatic agreement.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

The liability-transfer structure reflects the circumstances of Mojtaba Khamenei's appointment. Named Supreme Leader under IRGC pressure following his father's death on 28 February 2026, he has no independent religious authority base and communicates only through handwritten messages. His legitimacy rests on IRGC support, which means he cannot afford to own a deal the IRGC's Ahmad Vahidi opposes.

In Iranian state discourse, designating the US as doshman (enemy) rather than a softer term signals that negotiations carry no moral weight of reconciliation. Khamenei used the doshman label to signal to the IRGC hardline base that he was permitting the talks without validating them ideologically. This framing pre-empted IRGC criticism: Nahavian and the Paydari Front had already publicly opposed the MOU before Khamenei's statement arrived.

Pezeshkian formally accepted accountability for MOU outcomes on 18 June, mirroring the IRGC's own framing that Iran was negotiating from a position of strength. Pezeshkian must now deliver an outcome satisfying both that framing and US minimum demands, positions that may be structurally incompatible.

Escalation

Khamenei's liability-transfer posture reduces the risk of immediate MOU collapse (he has endorsed it) while increasing the risk of Phase 2 collapse (he has pre-classified US nuclear demands as excessive). The 60-day window for final agreement now runs against a Supreme Leader who has built himself a credible exit from any deal that touches the nuclear programme.

What could happen next?

Risk
Khamenei's pre-classification of full IAEA access and stockpile transfer as excessive demands creates a structural collision with the MOU's stated nuclear obligations, making Phase 2 nuclear talks likely to fail on day one if the US presents those as minimum requirements.
Short term · Assessed
Consequence
Pezeshkian now carries political accountability for MOU outcomes he cannot deliver without IRGC consent, placing Iran's reform faction in an impossible position during Phase 2.
Medium term · Assessed
Meaning
The doshman framing in the statement is the first public use of that designation in a formal Supreme Leader communique since the war began, signalling that the MOU has not changed Tehran's ideological posture toward Washington.
Immediate · Assessed

Source Landscape

This story draws on mixed-leaning sources from Russia

Russia

Primary parallel: Ayatollah Khomeini's acceptance of UN Resolution 598 in July 1988, ending the Iran-Iraq war, followed the same pattern: Khomeini called it 'drinking poison' and explicitly distanced himself from the decision while accepting it as militarily necessary. He delegated execution to Prime Minister Mousavi. Khamenei's June 2026 framing is structurally identical: tactical acceptance framed as an enemy imposition, with political liability transferred to the civilian government.

Counter-parallel: In 2015, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei endorsed the JCPOA without the liability-delegation language. He retained ownership of the deal and shared its political benefits when it produced sanctions relief. Mojtaba Khamenei's liability-transfer model in 2026 is the opposite structure, and suggests he does not expect Phase 2 to produce the same benefits.

Consensus view: House of Saud analysis assessed that Khamenei's June 18 statement was a pre-authorised walkout, not an endorsement. By labelling enrichment dismantlement, full IAEA access, and stockpile transfer as 'excessive demands' before Iran's Phase 2 negotiators arrived in Switzerland, Khamenei pre-classified the US's minimum asks as unacceptable.

The accountability delegation to Pezeshkian follows Iranian constitutional practice when a Supreme Leader needs political insulation from a potentially failed negotiation.

Counter-view: Critical Threats (AEI) analysis of domestic dynamics assessed that hardliner objections from the Paydari Front were politically loud but constitutionally weak. Khamenei's endorsement, however minimal, carries the weight of the supreme leadership and will override parliamentary dissent.

Once The Supreme Leader signals a direction, that signal holds regardless of IRGC or Majlis pressure ; a dynamic observed consistently across the previous Supreme Leader's handling of the 2015 JCPOA.

Key tension: Whether Khamenei's pre-labelling of core nuclear demands as 'excessive' reflects a genuine red line that will collapse Phase 2, or a negotiating floor that will be revised when faced with the alternative of resumed US military pressure.

Sources:Sputnik Farsi / Times of Israel·Sputnik Farsi / Times of Israel

Mentions:Masoud Pezeshkian →Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding →Paydari Front →Mahmoud Nabavian →Ayatollah Khomeini →Ali Khamenei →Switzerland →Majlis →Iraq →Mojtaba Khamenei →Iran →Washington →IAEA →

First Reported In

Update #132 · Trump lifted the blockade, not the strait

Sputnik Farsi / Times of Israel· 19 Jun 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Iran's deal-signer cannot be reached at speed

Khamenei's 18 June endorsement of the MOU followed and responded to Trump's claim of highest-level Iranian approval (ID:4126) of the framework.

Occurred 12 Jun 2026

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This Event

Khamenei backs deal, in language of leaving

Iran's leader backed the deal in words while keeping his own name off it, leaving a clean exit if the next round fails.

Led to

Iran turned Lebanon into a timetable lever

Khamenei's 18 June MOU endorsement, which branded IAEA access excessive, sits alongside Baghaei's Lebanon reframing as Tehran's parallel dual-track: endorse the deal, extract maximum pressure from it.

Occurred 19 Jun 2026

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Different Perspectives

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

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 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

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 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

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.