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. (Source)
