Atop Iranian cleric has described ongoing talks with the administration of US President Donald Trump led by his special envoy and fellow property magnate Steve Witkoff as akin to a real estate negotiation in which Iran will prevail.
Mostafa Pourmohammadi, secretary of the Combatant Clergy Association and a former interior and justice minister, said Iran would get a fair deal after initial posturing and an expected back and forth.
US-Iran talks are set to get trickier as the two foes thrash out technical details deciding the limits to Iran's nuclear activity and the scope of inspections, a former senior US negotiator told Eye for Iran.
Richard Nephew, former US deputy special envoy for Iran during part of Joe Biden's presidency, said the level of trust between President Donald Trump and his special envoy Steve Witkoff augured well for the talks.
Still, as the negotiations are set for their third round on Saturday and first set of technical talks, the devil may be in the technical details.
"We haven't yet really seen a pretty clear sense of consistency or attention to detail on the technical side," he said in an interview with the podcast.
Twenty senior Iranian officials have now been found living in Canada, Global News reported on Friday, citing immigration officials, as Ottawa moves to crack down on top former Islamic Republic figures amid pressure from the Iranian diaspora.
The latest case involves an Iranian citizen accused of serving as a top official in Tehran, the report added.
The man is scheduled to appear before the Immigration and Refugee Board in June.
The report said that his name was initially released to Global News but was later withheld at the request of the board because the deportation hearing will be held behind closed doors.
The man is an official in Iran’s oil ministry, the report said citing Iranian media.
The case is part of a broader crackdown launched by the Canadian government in 2022 targeting alleged high-level Iranian officials living in the country, Global News said.
The deportation hearings for these individuals have been held largely in secret, and according to the report, only one deportation has been completed so far, although some individuals have left Canada voluntarily.
In January, Canadian authorities launched deportation proceedings against an Iranian woman they said was a senior member of the Iranian government.
Earlier in March 2014, Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) ordered the deportation of Salman Samani, Iran's deputy minister of interior during Hassan Rouhani's term as president.
Salmani was the second high-ranking Iranian official who had been ordered to leave Canada. In February that year, Majid Iranmanesh, a director general at Iran's Vice-Presidency for Science and Technology, was also forced to leave.
In June 2024, after pressure from members of the Iranian diaspora, Ottawa moved to officially designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, effectively barring thousands of senior Iranian officials including top IRGC members from entering Canada.
The ongoing negotiations between the United States and Iran are not limited to Tehran’s disputed nuclear program but also include its missile program, Reuters reported on Friday, citing an Iranian official with knowledge of the talks.
Following a second round of talks in Rome on April 19, Iranian negotiators were "persuaded that the US had accepted Tehran's position that it would not entirely end its enrichment program or surrender all the uranium it has enriched already."
However, the official was quoted as saying that Iran's missile program remained a big sticking point.
"The only remaining point of disagreement in the general discussions and mutual understanding is the missile issue," the report said citing the Iranian official.
The Islamic Republic insists that its missile program is a non-negotiable element of its defense strategy. The Trump administration has also refrained from mentioning Iran's missile program, emphasizing that the focus of its ongoing talks with Tehran is solely to prevent the country from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
Iran's chief negotiator Abbas Araghchi has arrived in Muscat and his American counterpart Steve Witkoff has also departed Russia for Oman to attend the third round of talks with Tehran slated for Saturday.
The United States urged Syria’s interim authorities to prevent Iran and its allied groups from exploiting the country’s territory, while Iran accused Washington of worsening Syrians' suffering through sanctions, during a UN Security Council meeting on Friday.
"We will hold Syrian interim authorities accountable for the following steps to fully renounce and suppress terrorism, adopt a policy of non-aggression to neighboring states, exclude foreign terrorist fighters from any official roles, prevent Iran and its proxies from exploiting Syrian territory," said Dorothy Shea, the Deputy US representative to the United Nations in New York.
Iran’s representative Amir Saeid Iravani, in turn, said US sanctions were worsening the suffering of Syrians and hampering reconstruction.
Iran supports free elections and the formation of an inclusive government in Syria, Iravani added, calling for the immediate withdrawal of all foreign forces from Syria.
The Iranian envoy also warned that the presence of foreign forces undermines the country’s sovereignty and delays peace efforts.
To signal and justify possible nuclear concessions in ongoing US talks, Iran's Supreme Leader has once again alluded to a historic concession by a Shi'ite Muslim leader to buy time against a stronger foe.
The reference was the same deployed by the wily 86-year-old theocrat to justify Iran's agreement to a landmark 2015 nuclear deal.
Speaking Thursday at a modest religious gathering in his office on Thursday, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei recalled how the second Shia Imam, Hasan ibn Ali—seen by Shia Muslims as a paragon of just leadership—signed a controversial peace treaty with hated foe Mu'awiya in 661 CE.
The treaty, Khamenei said, was a calculated move to safeguard the long-term interests of Islam.
Although he made no direct mention of the ongoing nuclear negotiations with the United States, the allusion is almost certainly a subtle endorsement of diplomacy.
“Some people would come forth with complaints and objections when Imam Hasan made peace with Mu’awiya … it is temporary. The Imam has been recorded as saying that this incident, this domination of heresy and hypocrisy, is not meant to be permanent,” Khamenei said.
Khamenei’s tone marks a shift from early February, when he dismissed engagement with US President Donald Trump as “unwise, undignified, and dishonorable" after Washington reimposed so-called maximum pressure sanctions.
While expressing wariness of the West, his stance has since shifted to cautious pragmatism. “We are neither overly optimistic nor overly pessimistic about these talks,” he said after the first round of talks earlier this month, before adding a sharp caveat: “I am very pessimistic about the other side.”
Khamenei used the same historical reference in 2013, branding Imam Hasan’s decision as an act of “heroic flexibility”—a phrase that became a byword for Iran’s nuclear diplomacy which helped seal the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
“Khamenei resorts to tactical retreat whenever he finds himself in a difficult position,” US-based commentator Ali Afshari told Iran International TV.
“He is trying to warn and to provide a rationale (for his decisions) to his radical supporters. He is telling them they should not raise objections because acceptance of a deal is a tactical move rather than a strategic position.”
Hardline objections
The reference to Imam Hasan’s treaty follows a broader softening of rhetoric among clerics, politicians and media outlets after the first round of indirect US-Iran talks in Oman on April 12.
But Khamenei’s approval of diplomacy with the United States has exposed rifts among Iran’s hardliners. While some factions are rallying behind his position, some others—particularly ultra-hardliners who refer to themselves as the real revolutionaries—have expressed frustration.
In further comments on Thursday, the Supreme Leader appeared to confront those naysayers.
"Our neglect, at times our loose lips, our failure to help, our needless protests, lack of patience, (and) at times the flawed analyses that we make about the situation, can sometimes have an impact," he said. "One must be very careful."
With Khamenei’s authority remaining unchallengeable, dissent remains subdued and blame is often cast on others rather than Khamenei.
“The biggest reason (for Imam Hasan’s peace deal) was the lack of a loyal army," Sasan Daneshpajouh, an ultra-hardliner social media influencer with over 33 thousand followers posted on X.
"The Imam made a deal to save the Shi'ites from death and destruction, so that in the future they could form an army and ultimately win,” he added, implying Khamenei would not have been pushed into concessions had he possessed more loyal followers.