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European Oil Markets
20JUL

Ghalibaf says Iran will not fold

2 min read
10:00UTC

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.

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.

First Reported In

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

bne IntelliNews· 9 Jul 2026
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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.
Different Perspectives
Kuwait
Kuwait
Kuwait absorbed the Iranian strike that knocked generating units offline at a combined power-and-desalination plant on 17 July, the event that finally moved freight and insurance in lockstep with Brent. The strike hit essential civilian infrastructure, not a trading desk's benchmark.
Asian buyers (Singapore)
Asian buyers (Singapore)
Singapore's middle distillates rose 12% month-to-date to 8.91m barrels and fuel oil passed 19m barrels on a 105% net-import surge, buyers retaining barrels as the East-West arbitrage window narrows. Cargoes are being stockpiled ahead of further Hormuz-driven freight repricing rather than released west.
Austria (Coreper holdout)
Austria (Coreper holdout)
Vienna is blocking the same package over roughly EUR 2bn of frozen Russian assets earmarked for Raiffeisen, a domestic banking dispute with no connection to the oil cap racing toward its 23 July expiry. The linkage forces the whole package to wait on a bilateral compensation fight.
Greece (Coreper holdout)
Greece (Coreper holdout)
Athens is holding the 21st sanctions package at the 22 July Coreper vote over Russian LNG re-export rights, a condition unrelated to the oil price cap itself, leaving the $44.10 freeze one day from expiry without a deal. Greece's own tanker registry gives it a direct stake in how any shadow-fleet measures are drafted.
Marine underwriters (Gulf war-risk)
Marine underwriters (Gulf war-risk)
Hull war-risk cover for Hormuz transits widened to a 3-10% band on 17 July with 5% the emerging norm, up from a 3-4% baseline set in late June, the first repricing in six weeks to track a flat-price move rather than lag it. Cover resets on actuarial evidence of loss, not on diplomatic or price signals.
Money managers (CFTC-tracked)
Money managers (CFTC-tracked)
The CFTC's week-to-14-July snapshot, released 17 July, showed WTI managed-money net long collapsing 69% to 19,783 contracts and a standalone 60,141-contract net short on Brent Last Day (NYMEX). Both readings predate the Kuwait strike and the 20 July escalation, so any covering since is not yet visible in public data.