Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s president, has been forced to deny claims that he has repeatedly threatened to resign as he battles hardline factions opposed to reaching a settlement with the US over the strait of Hormuz.
The US and Europe hope a deal is imminent to reopen the strait and they are putting pressure on Oman to accept a temporary agreement that officials in Muscat fear will leave Iran retaining near permanent dominance of the vital oil shipping channel. Ships would enter the strait in a route close to Iran, but leave on a route that passes through Iranian and Omani waters.
But far from being feted over an imminent diplomatic victory, Pezeshkian was instead forced to deny that he had repeatedly offered to resign, verbally and in writing, during a television interview marking his second anniversary in the job.
Pezeshkian accused some of wishing to create a rift inside Iran and said: “If I want to resign, I will officially announce that I have resigned. I will not resign, I will stand.”
The resignation claims, which have been front page news in Iran, were made by Mohammad Bagher Kharazi, who is linked by marriage to Mojtaba Khamenei, the new supreme leader.
He said Pezeshkian had become frustrated at being excluded from decision making, made worse by the supreme leader’s reluctance to reveal his whereabouts for fear of foreign intelligence agencies. Khamenei was badly injured in the Israeli bombing on the first day of the war that killed his father and has not been seen or heard in public since.
Kharazi claimed Pezeshkian had threatened to quit so many times that Khamenei warned him he would accept the next resignation threat, a claim Khamenei’s office eventually said on Tuesday was “fundamentally false and untrue”.
Pezeshkian insisted in the interview that he was in complete harmony with the military and said those that claimed 30,000 people had been killed in the January protests never took up the offer to provide proof.
The interview, marking the halfway point of his turbulent presidency, appeared to be an attempt to dispel the impression that his belief in consensus was a weakness, or that he had been sidelined by hardline war leaders.
Kharazi is the brother-in-law of Massoud Khamenei, the younger brother of the supreme leader. Critics say he has a record of making unsubstantiated allegations and despite his family connections to the supreme leader, it is not clear if he has seen him since his elevation to the post in March.
However, the row has highlighted the deep strategic and tactical differences inside Iran over the wisdom of talks with the US.
Mehdi Tabatabaei, a senior member of the Iranian president’s office, described the reports as “complete nonsense and lies”.
In a post on social media, he condemned a “sinister coalition of lying, deceitful and reckless extremism”whose members could not accept democratic outcomes. He said: “Two years have passed since their failure in the arena of national elections, yet they are still seeking revenge against the will of the nation. They have become puppets of Iran’s enemies.”
Ahmad Zeidabadi, a reformist reporter, said the claims were inflammatory and served only to exacerbate tensions.
Pezeshkian on Sunday suggested that the memorandum of understanding, negotiated with the US in June and reviled by some hardliners, would serve as a cornerstone for Iranian foreign relations in the future, saying that Iran “must strive to compel the enemy to remain committed to what it has signed”.
On Monday, the conservative-dominated Assembly of Experts issued a statement describing hopes for an agreement or understanding with the US as “futile” and labelled what it termed “whispers of capitulation in the name of defending peace” an “unforgivable betrayal”. It added that trusting this arrogant government was nothing more than a mirage.
Khamenei himself had said in April he was opposed to talks with the US in principle, but in deference to Pezeshkian had allowed them to go ahead.
