This Editor’s Note was sent out earlier Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here.

Mahmoud Nabavian, an Iranian MP, the deputy head of the national security council and a former negotiator with the US, appeared on Iranian state television on Saturday to denounce the memorandum of understanding his colleagues had signed with US President Donald Trump.

Claiming to have seen correspondence from Mojtaba Khamenei, Nabavian specified that the new supreme leader had set 11 conditions for the negotiations that produced the MOU and led to this week’s further talks in Switzerland, and that Iran’s negotiating teams had proved overly compromising and failed to heed Khamenei’s instructions.

Among the conditions that Nabavian said Khamenei had set, and that the negotiators had failed to insist upon, were maintaining Iran’s “right” to enrich uranium, the lifting of sanctions, the release of Iran’s billions of dollars of frozen assets, Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz and the charging of fees for traversing the waterway, and the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon.

The interview on Irib (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting), which was abruptly curtailed, caused a bit of a rumpus in Iran. For one thing, how had Nabavian gotten hold of Khamenei’s secret correspondence? For another, how had he been allowed onto state television to detail its content and denounce Iran’s negotiators and their tactics?

At least one official at the broadcaster has resigned, the Guardian reported, the program in question has been removed from the Irib archive, and Nabavian may face legal action.

The bitter irony, however, is that the emphatically hardline conditions that Nabavian claims Khamenei was demanding, and that he sallied forth to set out on state TV as ostensible proof of the current negotiators’ failings, have been more than met in the MOU and the opening sessions of the negotiations in Switzerland this week.

Sanctions are being waived and assets unfrozen, saving the regime from financial collapse and enabling it to lavishly fund its military machine. Iran has asserted sovereignty over Hormuz and made plain it intends to charge tolls once the 60 days of talks are over. Israel is under mounting American pressure to fully withdraw from Lebanon, easing Hezbollah’s resurgence. And far from merely securing the right to enrich uranium, the regime has conceded nothing whatsoever as regards its nuclear program; it maintains its stockpile of 60 percent enriched uranium and its vast stocks of........

© The Times of Israel