14JUN

Ghalibaf says Iran will not fold

2 min read

11:42UTC

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.

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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.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources from United Kingdom

United Kingdom

Primary parallel: The US withdrawal from the 2015 JCPOA in 2018 exploited the same structural gap: an executive agreement never ratified by the Senate as a treaty could be unilaterally repudiated without triggering the constitutional threshold that binds a ratified instrument. Iran's Majlis is now working the identical gap from the other side, arguing the Islamabad memorandum was never ratified and so carries no binding force on Tehran either.

Counter-parallel: The JCPOA itself continued to function for years among its European signatories despite lacking US Senate ratification, because Britain, France and Germany treated the political commitment as binding regardless of its formal legal status, a precedent showing unratified agreements can survive if enough parties choose to honour them anyway.

Consensus view: The Middle East Institute's Alex Vatanka, who in June judged hardline objections to the memorandum as loud but institutionally weak, now reads Ghalibaf's own breach declaration differently: the Majlis speaker joining the hardliners rather than defending his signature signals the memorandum has lost its strongest domestic advocate, on top of its critics.

Counter-view: United Against Nuclear Iran's Jason Brodsky argues the legal threat is secondary; Ghalibaf is positioning himself as the dominant voice in Tehran while Mojtaba Khamenei remains unseen since his father's death, using the memorandum breach as the vehicle rather than the point.

Key tension: Whether Ghalibaf's statement is a genuine legal maneuver under Article 77 or a bid to fill the authority vacuum left by an invisible new Supreme Leader.

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

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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.

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 →

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