Iranian hardliners reportedly wrote furious social media posts after White House Special Rep. Steve Witkoff met with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Tuesday, with some calling for both Araghchi and President Masoud Pezeshkian to be removed from office.
Curiously, the military junta that effectively rules Iran, led by its notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), seemed to tacitly endorse diplomatic contacts. One IRGC spokesman told state media that negotiations are “another facet of war.”
Once the meeting between Araghchi and Witkoff actually occurred, the response from hardline Iranian social media was much more hostile, as Radio Free Europe (RFE) reported on Wednesday:
Some called for impeachment proceedings to be launched though they were not clear if they wanted Araqchi or Pezeshkian out of office. One user charged that the meeting was “an even bigger mistake” than Pezeshkian traveling to the US for the UN General Assembly.
“If anyone’s met and negotiated with the Americans, they better stay there. [Iran] is a country for honorable people,” wrote Vahid Azizi, an economist and former official at the Iranian National Tax Administration under hard-line late president Ebrahim Raisi.
Hard-line commentator Mohsen Maqsudi said it was “sheer stupidity” to negotiate with Washington while “under threat” and cause a drop in oil prices. Tehran has been hoping that the rise in fuel costs will pressure Trump into ending the war.
Hardline parliamentarian Ebrahim Rezaei demanded to know under whose authority Araghchi met with “the representative of an aggressor enemy.”
Iran’s state-run Tasnim News Agency called Araghchi’s meeting with Witkoff “absurd” because Tehran has already made its non-negotiable demands for halting its terror attacks in the Strait of Hormuz clear. Another state news agency, Fars, castigated Araghchi for potentially bungling the strategy of rising oil prices that seemed on the verge of delivering the U.S. Congress to Trump’s adversaries.
Pezeshkian himself was combative in his U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) address on Wednesday, railing against the U.S. and Israel for “terrorism” and “war crimes.” As the hardliners demanded, Pezeshkian brought up the bombing of a girls’ school in February, which Iran claims was a deliberate attack on civilians by the United States.
The exchange between Witkoff and Araghchi that inflamed the hardliners was an “indirect” communication, meaning they sent messages through mediators from Qatar rather than speaking directly. The talks reportedly lasted about three hours.
Both Witkoff and Trump said they were satisfied with the talks, which were the first diplomatic exchange between the U.S. and Iran since the memorandum of understanding that was intended to reopen the Strait of Hormuz was negotiated in June.
Trump said the meeting was “very good” and could help to “get this thing ended.”
“I think there’s a lot of momentum for them to make a deal,” the president said.
“I don’t want to mischaracterize this as a major breakthrough. But at the same time, I think it was significant that at least there was a conversation,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, with a bit less optimism than Trump and Witkoff.
Rubio said that one reason for his skepticism was his doubt that Araghchi and Pezeshkina could get the IRGC and hardline politicians to go along with any peace deal that would be acceptable to the United States.
“The ultimate decision-making in Iran lies in the hands of people that are strong believers in the Iranian revolution. And that makes interactions problematic,” Rubio said.
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