Iran's mercurial ex-security boss gatecrashes US talks with his media arm

Some warn that President Donald Trump is unpredictable and may change course at any moment; others go further, calling the talks a trap. There are even accusations of insider sabotage, with fingers pointed at those said to benefit from continued sanctions.

What are the doubters saying?

“The US government will block the lifting of sanctions on Iran’s oil sales and international banking,” vocal conservative analyst Foad Izadi asserted in an interview with the Didban Iran news outlet on Thursday.

Even if a deal is signed, Izadi warned, meaningful sanctions relief is unlikely because an entrenched hawkish faction in Washington is at work to undermine any agreement.

Recent comments by President Trump and his team—along with interventions from the likes of Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Mike Lawler—appear to have deepened concerns in Tehran, pushing hardliners like Izadi to break their begrudging silence.

“The Americans may attack Iran even in the middle of talks or afterward if they believe the costs of doing so are minimal. They did the same to Libya,” the US-educated pundit added.

What's the connection to Libya?

Slain Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi gave up the North African nation’s nuclear and missile program in 2003 to improve ties with the West.

But in Tehran’s view he was betrayed once popular protests broke out in 2010, morphing into an armed revolution backed by NATO air strikes culminating in Gadaffi's grisly killing by rebels.

“Some Iranian politicians believe that if we abandon our nuclear and missile development programs, the US will treat us as favorably as it treats Saudi Arabia,” former MP Elias Naderan told Khabar Online on Thursday.

“But in reality, they will treat us just as they treated Syria and Libya.”

As long as the Islamic Republic is in conflict with Israel, there will be no rapprochement with the United States, Naderan asserted.

His comments signal a return to older hardline rhetoric that equates disarmament with vulnerability in the face of unwavering hostility from the US, hastening the downfall of the theocracy.

Who is being accused of sabotage?

Some moderate and centrist are accusing former security chief Ali Shamkhani of leaking confidential details about the ongoing talks.

The accusations have found more relevance because Shamkhani’s son is allegedly involved in exports of Iranian oil and his business could suffer, according to his critics, if sanctions are lifted.

Earlier this week, a website with links to Shamkhani published a report with some details from the ongoing talks between Tehran and Washington—including a claim that the US government had accepted that Iran does not possess nuclear weapons.

“Shamkhani’s disclosure … has fueled pressure from US neoconservatives on Trump and his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, thereby jeopardizing the negotiations,” centrist outlet Entekhab wrote in an editorial.

What do the critiques mean?

While Tehran continues its cautious diplomatic engagement with Washington, these public statements reflect a fractured elite struggling to agree on whether diplomacy is a shield or a trap.

The resurfacing of Libya parallels, warnings about war, and accusations of sabotage all point to a deeper anxiety about the outcome of the talks—and the fate of the Islamic Republic.

Trump, speaking on Wednesday, said he had yet to decide on the matter and would announce his position during an upcoming trip to the Middle East. “I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings,” he added.

Reports—first published by the Associated Press—about potential plans to officially adopt the name "Arabian Gulf" in official US parlance have drawn sharp criticism from Iranian officials and also sparked widespread backlash across social media.

Reactions have cut across political lines, uniting unlikely voices in outrage. Iranians across the political spectrum, from Islamic Republic apparatchiks to the US-based exiled prince viewed any such move as an affront to their historical and national identity.

Common cause

Describing the Persian Gulf as “the strongest factor in uniting the Iranian people” in a post on X, reformist former vice president Mohammad-Ali Abtahi warned about a negative impact of renaming on Tehran-Washington nuclear talks.

Even those who support negotiations with the US, Abtahi said, would be forced to stand in opposition.

Veteran diaspora opposition figure Mohsen Sazegara told Iran International TV that the move could be a boon to a hard Iranian line in talks.

"Trump would provide Khamenei with a great opportunity to use Iranians’ sense of nationalism to his own benefit," he said. "(It's) the best lever Khamenei has to back out of the negotiations."

Exiled crown prince Reza Pahlavi also said in a statement: “The reported decision by President Trump to abrogate history, should it be true, is an affront to the people of Iran and our great civilization."

“But, once again, the true culprit of this shameful act is Ali Khamenei and his anti-Iranian regime who have so weakened our nation that foreign powers dare make such transgressions against Iran’s national identity and world history."

The exiled opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalq also issued a statement warning that any effort to change the name of the Persian Gulf would only benefit Khamenei, giving him an opportunity to deflect from domestic dissent and redirect public anger toward a foreign enemy.

Some analysts suggest the controversy may be part of a deliberate psychological tactic to destabilize Iran’s negotiating position.

Shahram Kholdi, a Canada-based Iran analyst, pointed to Trump’s close ties with Arab states and argued the maneuver could be strategic. “Trump uses every tactic to psychologically confuse the other side and gain points,” he told Iran International TV.

Pressure to exit talks

Iran’s ultra-hardliners, who had tempered their opposition to US negotiations after Khamenei’s tacit endorsement, are now urging the government to withdraw from the talks.

Naser Mesdaghi, a journalist, urged President Masoud Pezeshkian to immediately walk away from the talks if the US deviates from historical nomenclature.

“All Iranians support this decision and will endure the hardship of sanctions and war for the sake of Iran’s integrity,” he said in a post on X.

Tehran-based commentator Ali Nasri went further, framing the issue as part of a broader disinformation campaign. “This ridiculous rumor … is the next stage of psychological warfare,” he posted on X.

"Having failed to stop the negotiations, the Israel lobby and its affiliated diaspora opposition are now trying to poison and anger public opinion at every stage.”

Despite Tehran agreeing to expanded inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the dispute over enrichment has cast doubt over the timing and direction of the next round of negotiations, originally scheduled to resume this week after being delayed in Oman.

“Iran has accepted strict and intensive inspections by IAEA inspectors, and the two sides have reached an understanding on verification and control mechanisms,” an Iranian diplomatic source familiar with the talks said on condition of anonymity.

“The key disagreement is over Iran’s right to enrich uranium domestically—something the American side opposes,” the source said, adding that the US team's shifting goals were complicating the negotiations.

“In every round, the Americans bring up new topics—missiles, proxies—without a consistent framework.”

A second diplomatic source confirmed that Iran had agreed to restrain its regional allies, including by asking the Houthis to temporarily halt attacks, partly to deny Israel what he called a "pretext" to obstruct diplomacy.

US officials contacted by Iran International declined to comment on the specifics of the talks but acknowledged the urgency and fragility of the moment.

“Time is short and we need to make progress quickly. To make that happen, the Iranians need to negotiate in good faith and sincerely desire to reach a deal,” a State Department spokesperson told Iran International.

Internal Divisions in Tehran

Meanwhile Iran too has fissures of its own on the talks dossier, with hardliners continuing to criticize the talks but negotiators still appearing determined to clinch a fair deal to avoid war.

“There’s a difference between building media credibility and childish competition for scoops,” Mohammad Hossein Ranjbaran, an adviser to Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, posted on X on Tuesday.

“Agencies and esteemed officials who receive classified reports must protect them. Leaking information to favored outlets undermines national interests,” he added, in an apparent reference to a report published the day before by Nour News, a site close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s adviser Ali Shamkhani.

The outlet cited an anonymous source saying the fourth round of talks would focus on “humanitarian and security concerns," without elaborating, suggesting that the negotiations had expanded beyond the nuclear dossier—something never mentioned by officials involved in the talks.

A diplomatic source told Iran International that unauthorized disclosures could undermine the Iranian negotiating team.

The measure targets Hebei Xinhai Chemical Group Co., an independent refinery Washington asserts has received hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of Iranian crude, some linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Three Chinese port operators in Shandong province were also sanctioned for managing terminals that received sanctioned shipments from Iran’s shadow fleet, vessels used to hide the origin of shipments.

“The United States remains resolved to intensify pressure on all elements of Iran’s oil supply chain to prevent the regime from generating revenue to further its destabilizing agenda,” treasury secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement released on the website of the treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

Seven vessels and the companies that own them were also sanctioned, according to OFAC citing their role in transferring Iranian petroleum to China. Among those were tankers flagged in Panama and Hong Kong.

Two Indian ship captains were also designated for years-long involvement in steering sanctioned tankers carrying Iranian oil, the US treasury said.

The sanctions fall under executive orders by US president Donald Trump as part of his so-called maximum pressure campaign on Iran alongside the ongoing diplomatic push to resolve the standoff with Tehran over its nuclear program.

"We're trying to work on Iran to get that solved without having to get into any bombing," Trump said in his latest statement on Iran on Thursday.

"As we say, big bombing. I don't want to do that. I want them to be very successful," he added.

According to reports from Iranian media and residents, working-class neighborhoods in southern and western Tehran are experiencing up to four hours of daily blackouts, while more affluent districts in the north remain largely unaffected.

This disparity, once a topic of speculation among citizens, has now been corroborated by the reformist leaning Ham-Mihan newspaper, and acknowledged in comments by both energy officials and lawmakers.

A recent field investigation by Ham-Mihan found that nearly 75% of documented blackouts in Tehran province during the first two months of the Iranian calendar year (started March 20) occurred in lower-income areas. In contrast, power remained uninterrupted in wealthier northern districts, even during periods of peak demand.

While Tehran Electricity Distribution Company had released a blackout schedule for spring, residents across marginalized neighborhoods say cuts have been occurring unpredictably and far more frequently than indicated.

“We have power outages twice a day — sometimes lasting up to two hours each,” a resident of Islamshahr, a southern suburb, wrote online. Meanwhile, a resident in District 2, in northern Tehran, reported no outages since the start of the blackout cycle.

The discrepancies have sparked a wave of criticism on social media and from public figures.

Hossein Selahvarzi, a prominent economist and former head of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, wrote: “If it is true that outages in the south of Tehran are more frequent than in the north, then our problem is not only energy imbalance — it is also a failure of social justice.”

In comments to Ham-Mihan, a senior official from Tehran’s regional power grid admitted the blackout pattern is not accidental. “To maintain network stability, we concentrate outages in outlying districts,” the unnamed source said.

“Blackouts in central or northern Tehran have political and media consequences that we try to avoid.”

The issue of unequal energy access is not confined to Tehran.

Hussein Haghverdi, a member of parliament representing the towns of Malard, Shahriar, and Qods in Tehran province, has publicly accused the Ministry of Energy of discriminatory energy allocation.

In a letter to Energy Minister Abbas Aliabadi, Haghverdi said that while the capital’s industrial zones faced a 50-megawatt blackout quota, neighboring residential and industrial towns were subjected to four times that amount.

“This vast disparity is unacceptable and has caused widespread dissatisfaction,” he wrote.

With temperatures rising and demand for cooling surging — particularly through water-intensive swamp coolers — Tehran’s daily water usage has already exceeded 3.1 million cubic meters.

Iran’s hydroelectric capacity — once a key component of the energy mix — has been severely curtailed by a historic drought.

Officials have warned that continued overconsumption could lead to even harsher cuts, with punitive 12-hour blackouts possible for chronic overusers.

But critics argue that the current approach to energy rationing lacks transparency and reinforces systemic inequalities.

“You can’t ask citizens to sacrifice while shielding elite districts from the consequences,” said an environmental policy expert in Tehran who requested anonymity. “This is not just a technical failure — it’s a governance issue.”

With no immediate relief in sight, the government is under mounting pressure to ensure that conservation efforts — and their consequences — are distributed fairly.

As one Ham-Mihan editorial put it: “The blackout map is becoming a social map — and it is illuminating more than just who has electricity.”