Secret correspondence claims suggest tensions at top of Iranian government

A former member of Iran’s negotiating team in the previous round of talks with the US in Islamabad is facing the threat of prosecution and dismissal from parliament after he went on the main state broadcaster to reveal what he claimed were confidential letters from the country’s supreme leader. The interview with Mahmoud Nabavian, the deputy chair of Iran’s national security council, was eventually cut off, but only after he said he had seen secret correspondence written by Mojtaba Khamenei in which the ayatollah allegedly said Iran’s negotiating team had overstepped its mandate An hour after the censored broadcast, the archive of the interview was removed and a senior official at the broadcaster resigned. Nabavian’s claims were dismissed by a spokesperson for the negotiating team as old and distorted. The state broadcaster said Nabavian’s statements were “evidence of a legal violation and worthy of legal prosecution”. Members of the camp of Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator at the current talks in Switzerland , called for the leaker to be identified. Centrists and reformists have long argued that the state broadcaster Irib acts as an agent for hardliners in the Paydari or Stability Front, of which Nabavian is a supporter. The Iranian parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf (centre), and Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, en route to Zurich, Switzerland, on Saturday. …