Mojtaba Khamenei broke a written silence on Thursday 18 June, the day after the signing, with his first message to the nation since taking office1. 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.
