Iran: Supreme leader says he approved the agreement with the United States, despite a "difference of opinion"

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, said on Thursday that he had approved the agreement with the United States to end the war, despite a "different opinion" on the matter, without giving further details.

"I had a different opinion, but I gave my permission because of the commitment that the esteemed (Iranian) president, as chairman of the Supreme National Security Council, made to me on his own behalf and on behalf of the other members to protect the rights of the Iranian nation and the resistance front" to Israel, Mojtaba Khamenei said in a written message read on state television.

According to him, the president also assured him that "if the American side makes excessive demands" in the continuation of negotiations for a final agreement, "they will not submit to them".

"It is clear that future face-to-face negotiations do not presuppose acceptance of the enemy's point of view," the supreme leader stressed, in this first reaction to the Iranian-American agreement aimed at ending the war, signed early Thursday by US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

The leader has not been seen in public since taking office in March, following the assassination of his father and predecessor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the first US-Israeli strikes against Iran on February 28, which triggered the regional war.

Mojtaba Khamenei further asserted that Donald Trump had "out of desperation pulled all sorts of levers" to obtain this agreement with Iran, in order to end the war.

AFP