Full story behind betraying Iran’s leader, as narrated by Khanalizadeh
According to Khanalizadeh, a prominent Iranian journalist, after the Leader’s martyrdom, the US quickly asked for a ceasefire, which Iran naturally rejected.
After the new Leader was chosen, Iranian officials prepared a 5-point plan for talks with the US, but the Leader rejected it.
After several rounds of revision, a 10-point framework was produced, which became the basis of the first SNSC statement. The Leader also added 8 extra conditions to that framework, including that there should be no nuclear negotiations at all.
He says the US initially accepted those 10 points as the basis because it needed a ceasefire, but once the Iranian team reached Islamabad, the Americans refused to negotiate on that basis.
Despite the Leader’s written instruction, the Iranian side reportedly discussed the nuclear file.
This made the Americans conclude that Iran did not really want to continue the war, and that if they pushed hard, they could extract concessions.
After Islamabad, the negotiating team sent reports to the Leader.
The Leader reacted negatively and objected, saying they had acted against religious/legal duty by discussing the nuclear issue and by failing to impose the 10 conditions.
Some SNSC members then wrote to him, arguing that talks could not happen without the nuclear issue and warned about continued war and attacks on infrastructure.
The Leader replied that “these negotiations would benefit neither their worldly affairs nor their afterlife,” and would not prevent Iran’s infrastructure from being hit.
After that, the negotiating team restarted message exchanges, completely set aside the 10-point framework, and pursued a new 14-point plan initiated by the Foreign Ministry, which became the Islamabad MoU.
The SNSC approved it and sent it to the Leader, but he gave no answer for about 2 weeks.
SNSC officials then considered treating his silence as approval, but at that meeting a letter from the Leader arrived with questions for each SNSC member.
Each member answered, and officials gave written commitments explaining how the clauses would be interpreted and implemented.
One example given is that the “non-interference” clause (US not interfering in Iran’s affairs( would mean shutting down some hostile anti-propaganda media outlets (such as Iran International, ManotoTV, …).
Only after these written commitments did the Leader authorize the MoU.
Khanealizadeh says this is the context behind the Leader’s phrase: “I had a different view.”
The Leader was not merely opposed to parts of the final MoU; he was against the whole post-Islamabad negotiation path once it moved away from the original 10-point framework.
The process, according to him, went forward because of pressure and insistence from the SNSC.