Top Iranian officials told Khamenei to allow US nuke talks or risk fall of regime – NYT

In a rare intervention, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was urged by his top officials to allow negotiations with the United States on the regime’s nuclear program or risk the fall of the Islamic Republic, The New York Times reported Friday.

The US and Iran are set to meet in Oman on Saturday for talks over Tehran’s rogue nuclear program.

According to The New York Times report, which cited two senior Iranian officials who are familiar with the details, Khamenei held a meeting last month attended by heads of the judiciary and parliament. Those officials, in what the sources described as an unusual, coordinated effort, pressured Khamenei into accepting talks with Washington, even direct ones.

They told Khamenei that the threat of military action by the US and Israel against its nuclear sites was serious.

“If Iran refused talks or if the negotiations failed, the officials told Mr. Khamenei, military strikes on Iran’s two main nuclear sites, Natanz and Fordow, would be inevitable,” the sources said, as reported by the Times.

The country, already in economic shambles, would be forced to respond, but then would also likely be plunged into domestic unrest if it were to go to war, they said.

The combination of such events would amount to an existential threat to the Islamic Republic, the officials reportedly told Khamenei.

The sources said that Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, an ex-Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps chief and current conservative head of Parliament, told Khamenei that a war combined with a domestic economic implosion could quickly get out of control.

They also quoted President Masoud Pezeshkian as telling Khamenei that managing the country through its current crises was not tenable. The report points to power cuts that threaten to shutter factories and water shortages in the central city of Yazd, which saw schools and government offices closed this week.

Iran previously rejected talks but has since relented amid US President Donald Trump’s threats.

Hossein Mousavian, a former diplomat who served on Iran’s nuclear negotiating team on a 2015 deal and is now a visiting fellow at Princeton University, told The New York Times that the change illustrated that preserving the regime was Khamenei’s main priority.

“Mr. Khamenei’s turnaround demonstrates his long-held core principle that ‘preserving the regime is the most necessary of the necessities,’” Mousavian said.

While Khamenei relented and agreed to talks, he also imposed his own conditions, the report said.

Citing three Iranian officials, the NYT said that Khamenei agreed to discuss strict monitoring for the nuclear program and a significant reduction of the enrichment of uranium. However, he has said that Iran’s missile program is off limits, regarding it as being part of Iran’s defenses. The sources said that was a “deal breaker.”

However, the report also said that Iran was “open to discussing its regional policies” and support for its terror proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen.

Hamas and Hezbollah have been severely weakened by Israel in the conflicts since Hamas’s Oct. 7 2023 assault on southern Israel, and the US is currently carrying out massive strikes on the Houthis.

The US has vowed not to allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon, and Trump has repeatedly threatened “bombing” and a “very bad day for Iran” if no agreement is reached to prevent it.

Iran, which is sworn to Israel’s destruction, denies seeking a nuclear weapon, but it has ramped up its enrichment of uranium to 60 percent purity, which has no application beyond nuclear weapons, and has obstructed international inspectors from checking its nuclear facilities.

Iranian officials said Friday that the Islamic Republic is giving the talks “a genuine chance,” and that, if there are not further “threats and intimidation from the American side, there is a good possibility of reaching an accord.”

The talks on Saturday will be led by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and US special envoy Steve Witkoff, with Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi as intermediary, according to Iranian state media.

Trump has characterized the talks as “direct,” while Iranian officials have insisted they will be “indirect.”

Khamenei adviser Ali Shamkhani said in a post to X on Friday that Araghchi was heading to Oman “with full authority for indirect negotiations with America.”

“Tehran seeks a real, just deal—away from media show and rhetoric. Key proposals are ready. If Washington shows determination for a deal, the path to agreement will be clear,” he wrote, in a message posted separately in Farsi, English, Arabic, Russian, and Hebrew.

The Iranian foreign ministry said on Friday the US should value the Islamic Republic’s decision to engage in talks despite what it called Washington’s “prevailing confrontational hoopla.”

The ministry’s spokesman, Esmaeil Baqaei, said Iran was “giving diplomacy a genuine chance in good faith and full vigilance,” adding, “America should appreciate this decision, which was made despite their hostile rhetoric.”

In the lead-up to the talks, Trump reiterated his warning that military action was “absolutely” possible if talks failed.

During his first term, Trump withdrew from a 2015 deal between Iran and six world powers — the US, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany —  and also imposed stiff sanctions. Iran responded by dropping some of its commitments to the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Hardline media in Iran voiced skepticism on the talks.

For example, the Kayhan newspaper ran editorials warning that new sanctions imposed this week showed the United States was “an enemy of Iran and its people” and dismissed negotiations to lift sanctions as a “failed strategy.”

Reformist media outlets struck a more optimistic tone, emphasizing the potential economic and investment opportunities talks could create.

Witkoff, expected to lead the American negotiation effort, visited Russia on Friday for talks on Ukraine with Russian President Vladimir Putin, an ally of Iran.

Expert-level consultations between Russia, China and Iran on nuclear issues took place in Moscow on Tuesday, according to the Russian foreign ministry.

Iran has in recent months also been talking with the three European signatories of the 2015 nuclear deal, namely France, Germany and Britain.

On Friday, Germany urged the two sides to reach a “diplomatic solution,” adding that it is a “positive development that there is a channel for dialogue between Iran and the United States.”