13JUN

Khamenei backs deal, in language of leaving

3 min read

10:52UTC

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.

← Back to The weekend signing that never reached paper Jump to analysis ↓

ConflictDeveloping

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

Read original →

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

Read story →

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

Read story →

Different Perspectives

Iran's Supreme Leader's office and Iranian households

A letter published through state media named Lebanon's territorial integrity and an end to Israeli operations there as the war's ending condition; the same week, spokesperson Mohajerani cut the subsidised petrol ration from 70 to 50 litres a month. Iranian agencies still disagree on who inside the office signed the letter.

Oman

Muscat proposed a voluntary-funded coalition to police Hormuz, the corridor its own coastline gives it standing to manage, while Iran wants control and toll rights over shipping and Washington insists on free navigation. Oman's remit stops at the strait; it has no comparable claim over Iraq, the Caspian, or Lebanon.

Kyiv

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the Caspian strike on an Iranian vessel carrying military cargo from Russia's Astrakhan region, opening a front that ties Iran's war to its supply relationship with Moscow rather than to anything the Gulf mediators are discussing.

Riyadh

Maj Gen Turki Al Malki named Iraq as the launch point for drones intercepted over the Eastern Province and Riyadh, the first time this war has reached Saudi Arabia from that direction rather than from Yemen. Nothing landed, but a second launch geography aimed at Saudi oil now exists alongside the Houthi front.

Baghdad

Iraq's Foreign Ministry summoned its own ambassador in Riyadh after Saudi Arabia's Defence Ministry said the drones came from Iraqi territory, while the same day drones struck Iranian-Kurdish opposition camps inside Iraq. Baghdad is disowning attacks it did not launch from territory it does not fully control.

The Pentagon and Congress

Acting press secretary Joel Valdez attributed the toll's reversal to site anomalies, the same explanation the department gave for the opposite cut on 24 July; Representative Thomas Massie called the category change an absurd ruse designed to reset the war's legal clock. Neither side agrees on which explanation, or which war, is real.