17OCT

Iran's parliament turns on its signatory

3 min read

18:37UTC

Around 60 members of Iran's Majlis signed a letter demanding Ghalibaf explain why he put his name to the memorandum, roughly a fifth of the 290-seat chamber. One MP said renaming a treaty a memorandum changes nothing binding.

← Back to Houthi missiles kill 13 at Riyadh's airport Jump to analysis ↓

ConflictDeveloping

Key takeaway

Iran's parliament wants its speaker to justify a signature the people who run the war never gave.

Around 60 members of Iran's Majlis, the 290-seat Parliament, signed a letter demanding speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf explain why he put his name to the memorandum.⁠¹ That is roughly a fifth of the chamber, a bloc large enough to threaten any ratification vote. Ghalibaf signed for the Parliament; the Parliament is now asking him to account for it. The revolt followed street protests in which the Basij marched on the foreign ministry and crowds in Mashhad demonstrated against Araghchi.

The legal argument cuts against the government. MP Abolfazl Aboutorabi said the document carries binding obligations "that cannot be resolved by simply changing the name", rejecting any claim that the memorandum label makes it less than a treaty. Amirhossein Sabeti of the hardline Paydari faction said the deal "violates the Supreme Leader's red lines". President Masoud Pezeshkian defended his negotiators, calling it unfortunate that officials safeguarding the national interest "face accusations of betrayal".

Mojtaba Khamenei, the one signature Iran most needs, has not appeared in public since March and rules by handwritten messages carried by courier, with a lag of several days. Trump claimed the Supreme Leader had personally approved the deal, but the approver has stayed unreachable at the speed the diplomacy is moving, and a mediating-country diplomat told Axios the deal was cleared "at high levels" but "likely not" by Khamenei himself. Ghalibaf's name is on the paper; Khamenei's is not.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Iran's parliament (called the Majlis) has around 290 elected members. About 60 of them have signed a letter demanding that the Parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, explain why he personally signed the Islamabad MOU on behalf of Iran. Ghalibaf is not Iran's president or foreign minister; he is the Speaker of Parliament. He signed the deal as the pro-deal face of Iran's government, but his own parliamentarians are now questioning whether he had the authority to do so. Two MPs have spoken out: Aboutorabi says the document carries binding legal obligations regardless of what it is called, and Sabeti from the hardline Paydari faction says the deal breaks lines that the Supreme Leader has said are non-negotiable. Iran's President Pezeshkian is defending the negotiating team, but around one-fifth of Parliament has publicly turned on its own Speaker.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Ghalibaf's position exposes a structural tension in Iran's constitutional order. The Majlis Speaker is the third-ranking constitutional figure, but Iran's Foreign Policy authority under the constitution rests with the Supreme Leader (Article 110) and the Supreme National Security Council. Ghalibaf signed an international instrument as the de facto executive face of Iran's pro-deal faction, a role that the constitution reserves for institutions with Supreme Leader endorsement.

Sabeti's invocation of Khamenei's red lines compounds the problem. Khamenei has not publicly endorsed the MOU and is reachable only by sealed courier with a three-to-five-day lag. The Paydari faction is therefore arguing, with some constitutional basis, that a signature was produced by the third-ranking official on an instrument the highest authority has not endorsed.

Source Landscape

This story draws on mixed-leaning sources from France

France

LeftRight

Primary parallel: After Iran's 2003 Tehran Declaration with the E3 (France, Germany, UK) that suspended uranium enrichment, hardline Majlis members launched a similar campaign against Foreign Minister Kharrazi and Supreme National Security Council Secretary Hassan Rouhani, arguing the suspension violated Iran's rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The protest failed to reverse the suspension but contributed to Rouhani's replacement by the harder-line Ali Larijani in 2005, who subsequently widened enrichment.

Counter-parallel: When Ahmadinejad-era negotiators returned from the 2009 Geneva fuel-swap deal, the Parliament initially endorsed it; the deal collapsed not from parliamentary revolt but from Supreme Leader Khamenei's withdrawal of support. The 2009 precedent suggests parliamentary pressure alone rarely reverses a deal; Supreme Leader withdrawal does.

Consensus view: Thomas Juneau at the Stimson Center has documented that the Majlis letter follows a precise constitutional script: under Article 84 of Iran's constitution, MPs can demand that ministers and senior officials answer questions before the chamber.

Ghalibaf, as Speaker, occupies an anomalous position; he is both a signing authority and a presiding officer, meaning the revolt is a parliamentary challenge to the Speaker from his own chamber, structurally unprecedented in the Majlis's post-1979 history.

Counter-view: Analysts at the RAND Corporation's Iran programme note that around 60 of 290 MPs represents roughly one-fifth of the chamber and is not a majority; the signatories of the protest letter cannot impeach Ghalibaf or nullify his signature, and Pezeshkian's defence of the negotiating team holds a larger institutional base.

Around 60 of 290 MPs cannot impeach Ghalibaf or nullify his signature under Majlis procedure, so the letter functions as a pressure signal rather than a constitutional veto.

Key tension: Whether the Paydari faction can grow the protest letter to a majority capable of triggering a formal Majlis vote of no confidence, which would restructure the domestic political support for the MOU before the Geneva ceremony.

First Reported In

Update #129 · Iran deal signed, but no paper to show

Euronews Persian· 16 Jun 2026

Read original →

Causes and effects

Caused by

Iran deal signed, no register entry

Ghalibaf's signature on the MOU immediately triggered the Majlis revolt demanding he justify his decision.

Occurred 15 Jun 2026

Read story →

Iran hardliners revolt against the deal

The Basij march and Mashhad crowd protests on 15 June preceded the parliamentary letter demanding Ghalibaf explain his signature.

Occurred 15 Jun 2026

Read story →

This Event

Iran's parliament turns on its signatory

The signature with legal weight inside Iran may be the one with the least authority over the war's nuclear, Hormuz and Lebanon files.

Led to

Iran hardliners rage but cannot block it

The 60 MPs demanding Ghalibaf justify his signature on 15 June escalated into the named hardliner condemnations with Vatanka/Brodsky counter-assessments on 16-17 June.

Occurred 16 Jun 2026

Read story →

Different Perspectives

International Energy Agency

G7 members agreed on 2 October to release up to 100 million barrels through the IEA over four months, front-loading diesel.

China

China signed the 15 October text reaffirming the Resolution 2216 arms embargo on the Houthis. The Wall Street Journal reported that Conflict Armament Research found Chinese parts in a Houthi copy of Iran's Kheibarshekan missile.

Russia

Russia joined the 15 October consensus condemning the Houthis, a month after vetoing a mandate for a UN panel of experts on Iran sanctions on 17 September. One Western official told Bloomberg that Moscow is providing Iran with missiles, and the White House rejected the assessment.

India

National Security Adviser Ajit Doval raised seafarer safety with Mohsen Rezaei on 12 October, after a drone hit the Petro Dolphin with 11 Indians aboard at Sohar. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar urged that attacks on commercial shipping and seafarers be avoided.

Lebanon

President Joseph Aoun met UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix in Beirut on 14 October as UNIFIL winds down before its mandate ends on 31 December. Two days later Qatar's prime minister pledged in Beirut to fund a solar plant for Lebanon.

Kataib Hezbollah

The militia announced a halt to operations except against "hostile aircraft" and denied any disarmament deal with Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi. A day later Quds Force chief Esmail Qaani urged eliminating "remaining traces of the US presence in other arenas".

Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.