The real story behind Tehran’s sudden “unity” campaign did not begin with Donald Trump’s accusations of disarray within Iran’s leadership. It began with a secret letter to Mojtaba Khamenei.
In recent days, word has circulated in Iranian political circles about a highly confidential letter reportedly written by a group of senior officials to Mojtaba Khamenei.
According to those familiar with the matter, the letter warned that Iran’s economic situation is grave, that the country cannot continue on its current path, and that the leadership has no practical choice but to negotiate seriously with the United States over the nuclear file.
The historical echo is hard to miss. In the final days of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988, senior Iranian officials and commanders warned Ruhollah Khomeini that the war could no longer be sustained.
Only days earlier, Khomeini had still been insisting on continuing the war. But under the weight of those warnings, he accepted UN Security Council Resolution 598 and ended the conflict, a decision he famously likened to drinking from a poisoned chalice.
That is why the current letter matters: it suggests that some senior figures now see the nuclear standoff as another moment when ideological insistence is colliding with the limits of the state.
The reported signatories included senior figures such as Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Masoud Pezeshkian, Abbas Araghchi, Mostafa Pourmohammadi, and others. Some officials apparently refused to sign it. One name now circulating is Ali Bagheri Kani, Iran’s former chief nuclear negotiator under Ebrahim Raisi.
The letter was supposed to remain top secret. It was addressed to Mojtaba Khamenei, not to the public, Parliament, or the ordinary political class. But according to accounts now circulating, Bagheri Kani showed the letter to other hardliners outside the high-level circle and emphasized that he had not signed it. From there, the matter leaked into political circles in Tehran.
Two public reactions suggest how sensitive the leak has become. The first came from Jalil Mohebbi, a figure close to Ghalibaf and a former secretary of the headquarters for Enjoining the Good and Forbidding the Evil.
In a pointed legal warning, he wrote that if a confidential letter is given to a member of a meeting, and that person shows it to outsiders while saying, “I did not sign this letter,” then under Article 3 of the law on publishing and disclosing confidential and secret government documents, that person can face up to ten years in prison.
Mohebbi added: “This offense is unforgivable.”
The second came from a Telegram channel that referred to an “important confidential letter” written by some senior officials and left unsigned by others.
The post asked why, at such a sensitive moment after the war, some officials had begun writing letters to “senior figures of the system,” and why others were so angry about its disclosure. In Iranian political language, that phrase is often used to refer to the Supreme Leader without naming him directly.
Trump’s claim meets Tehran’s denial
This was the atmosphere in which Trump’s claim landed. He said Iranian officials were “fighting like cats and dogs” because they could not agree about negotiations with the United States. Tehran immediately claimed otherwise. On Thursday, senior officials moved in near-unison to insist there was no split.
Ghalibaf, the speaker of parliament, wrote: “In Iran there are no hardliners or moderates. We are all Iranian and revolutionary.” He added that with the “iron unity of the nation and the state” and full obedience to the Supreme Leader, Iran would make the “criminal aggressor” regret its actions.
