Foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei told Fararu, the Tehran-based reformist-leaning news site, in Farsi that 'message exchanges with America continue' and that Iran 'will host a delegation from Pakistan'. Entekhab.ir, a moderate-conservative domestic outlet, carried his characterisation of the US Hormuz blockade as unlawful, the preferred legal framing heading into any next round. Neither statement appeared on IRNA, Mehr or Press TV in English or Farsi.
Baqaei has split his English-facing and Farsi-facing readouts on purpose, and the split is doing the operational work. The English-language statements issued the same day through the foreign ministry press office ran the public hardening: no plans to reengage, demand for Touska release, condemnation of the US action. The Farsi readout, aimed at the domestic reformist-centrist readership that supported Pezeshkian, confirmed the back-channel was still live. Fararu and Entekhab are the preferred conduits for signals Tehran wants Iranian elites to register without raising English-language wire traffic.
The pattern maps to the institutional split the war has run along since February. Pezeshkian's civilian government negotiates through Araghchi and Baqaei; the IRGC runs the kinetic track through Khatam al-Anbiya and Tasnim; the Majlis under Ghalibaf writes the laws that ratify what the IRGC does on the water. Baqaei's Farsi readout is the civilian channel signalling to Tehran's own elite that talks are still live; Ghalibaf's English-friendly 'table of surrender' line is the principlist channel signalling to its own base that nothing has been conceded. Both statements are official; both were released the same day; both are true within their own audience frame. Neither has produced a single signed Iranian document binding the government to either position.
