Secret correspondence claims suggest tensions at top of Iranian government | Iran
A former member of Iran’s negotiating team during a previous round of talks with the United States in Islamabad faced prosecution and threat of expulsion from parliament after appearing on the main state broadcaster and revealing what he claimed were secret letters from the country’s supreme leader.
The interview with Mahmoud Nabavian, deputy chairman of Iran’s national security council, was eventually cut, but only after he said he had seen secret cables written by Mojtaba Khamenei in which the ayatollah claimed Iran’s negotiating team had exceeded its authority.
An hour after the censored broadcast, the archive of the interview was removed and a senior official of the broadcaster resigned.
Nabavian’s claims were dismissed by the negotiating team’s spokesman as outdated and distorted. The state broadcaster said Nabavian’s statements were “evidence of legal violation and worthy of legal prosecution”.
Members of the camp of Mohammed Bagher Galibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator in the current talks in Switzerland, have called for the leaker to be identified. Centrists and reformists have long alleged that state broadcaster Irib acted as an agent of hardliners in Paydari, or the Stability Front, of which Nabavian is a supporter.
In addition to revealing tensions at the top of the government in near real time, the incident appears to indicate that the newly appointed supreme leader is taking a much more hands-on approach to the talks than previously known, ordering negotiators not to give up on the nuclear dossier or the immediate payment of tolls to Iran on ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
Khamenei did not make a public appearance or release an audio recording, instead acting through written statements. Some reports suggest that the negotiating team had to wait two weeks before receiving guidance from him on how negotiations would proceed, sending detailed questions to the negotiators.
In his letter to Iranian president Massoud Pezeshkian on Thursday, Khamenei said he had a different view on the outcome of the talks with the president, but deferred to his own decision on the specific circumstances.
Nabavian claimed that the supreme leader had actually set 11 conditions for the continuation of negotiations, including receiving compensation from the United States, preserving the right to enrich uranium, lifting sanctions, releasing Iran’s frozen assets and exercising full sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, and immediate collection of fees.
According to Nabavian, Khamenei emphasized that “Iran has a monopoly on the management of the Strait of Hormuz, collecting fees from passing ships, imposing restrictions on enemy ships, and distributing the revenues from the passage fees to the public, families of martyrs and veterans.”
Reopening the waterway should only happen if the United States agrees to pay compensation, the official said. The US agreed to set up a $350bn (£264bn) development fund but said it would not contribute.
Nabavian also claimed that Khamenei wrote in a message to the negotiating team: “What was agreed upon in the Pakistan talks is completely different from what should have happened and was a condition of the legitimacy of the talks and the talks must be stopped.” He was referring to talks in Islamabad, where the negotiating team was discussing some aspects of Iran’s nuclear program.
Later, in a Telegram channel, Nabavian continued the discussion, saying that he was not publishing confidential documents and was only revealing the truth.
According to the memorandum of understanding, “Four issues had to be implemented in order for the negotiations to begin: 1. Ending the occupation in Lebanon and complete withdrawal. 2. Release of our frozen money by America. Not borrowing from Qatar. 3. Lifting the siege. 4. Temporary lifting of sanctions.”
He questioned whether those four preconditions had been met before State Department officials traveled to Geneva for negotiations, and also asked: “Does this mean that people shouldn’t know what the imam’s orders were and why the agents didn’t follow them?”
