11SEP

Khamenei backs deal, in language of leaving

3 min read

09:25UTC

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

Turkey

Golden Global Portfoy Yonetimi closed three funds to new money a day after telling regulators they were legally separate from its sanctioned parent, and the central bank held its rate at 37 per cent citing energy-driven inflation risk. Ankara is absorbing balance-sheet and monetary costs from a war it is not fighting.

Qatar

Qatar's foreign ministry said it was coordinating with China during a Beijing visit to restart negotiations, while filing hundreds of letters at the UN documenting Iranian strikes on its own civilian facilities. Doha is mediating for a neighbour it is also formally accusing, a contradiction the referral's clean vote count does not show.

China and Russia

China and Russia voted against the IAEA referral alongside Niger, and Iran's ambassador told the Board that inspections were impossible during a war Iran did not start. Beijing is separately mediating between Doha and Tehran, meaning the same power blocking the West's legal track is running the diplomatic one that might actually end the war.

Jordan

Jordan said it intercepted 18 of the 20 Iranian ballistic missiles fired at its territory on 8 September, the war's first sustained salvo against a state that is not a combatant. Amman's 90 per cent interception rate held, but a tenfold jump in missiles fired in a single volley raises what the next one might carry.

United States

CENTCOM said its strikes disabled five Iranian tankers only after two failed missile attempts on a US warship, and Treasury moved the same week to a presumption of denial on all Iran licences. Washington now treats commercial shipping and financial plumbing as one enforcement front rather than two separate tracks.

Iran / IRGC

Iran's foreign ministry called the CENTCOM tanker strikes a war crime and a breach of the UN Charter, while the IRGC named two US destroyers it says it damaged without releasing images. Tehran expects the claims, unverifiable either way, to sustain domestic morale after losing five tankers in a single day.