The U.S. is obviously not willing to fulfill the conditions set out in its Memorandum of Understanding with Iran. It will need more pressure from Iran to make the U.S. agree to its demands.
The current team of Iranian leaders who had negotiated and signed the MoU are President Masoud Pezeshkian -a good heart surgeon but unexperienced politician-, Speaker of the Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf -a former IRGC leader and professional politician-, and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi -a longtime professional diplomat.
All three are now under critique for multiple breaches of the MoU by the U.S. and the perceived lack of Iranian responses to those.
Some 68 members of 88 men strong Assembly of Experts have published (in Farsi, in in English) a strong admonishing advice to the negotiators to stick to the ten points the Supreme Leader of Iran had defined.
The Assembly of Experts is the elected board of senior Islamic jurists which can elect and dispose of the Supreme Leader. It is residing in Qom. Its assembly building had been destroyed in one of the U.S. attacks on Iran.
Excerpts from the Assembly’s statement:
[W]e expect that, considering the experiences of past damaging negotiations, [the negotiators] will be completely careful of the tricks of the deceitful and bad enemy and pay attention to the fact that observing the leadership’s red lines is a religious obligation and violating them is not permissible under any circumstances.
…
In accordance with the commitment of the respected officials to the leadership and the people, it is expected that any breach of the agreement and violation of the clauses of the memorandum of understanding will be responded to immediately. Therefore, considering the continuation of the aggressors and crimes of the filthy Zionist regime in Lebanon and the failure to withdraw from the occupied territories, which is a clear violation of the first clause of the memorandum of understanding, the opening of the Strait of Hormuz is contrary to the obligations of the officials and is considered a strategic mistake and will make the enemy more bold in continuing to break the agreement and violate its obligations.
…
The servants of the nation in the Assembly of Experts, as part of the people, will remain with the esteemed leadership and the entire nation, while wishing success to the respected officials, awaiting the fulfillment of the conditions and promises, and will act on their religious duty when necessary.
While the Assembly has no direct means to depose of the negotiators their warning is a powerful signal. It can be understood as an appeal to the Supreme Leader, who can dissolve the government, to intervene in the situation.
Following the publishing of the letter President Pezeshkian has traveled to Qom to explain his view of the situation.
The Parliament of Iran is another institution which is discontent with the current negotiations. The parliament has been closed since the U.S. attack started on February 28. Speaker Ghalibaf has resisted demands to reopen parliament sessions.
Several parliament members want to adopt a binding law to demand a toll or fee for any passage of the Strait of Hormuz. The negotiators want to avoid that as any such law would restrict their flexibility in further negotiations.
Both interventions can be understood as critique of the negotiators. But they are also a device to strengthen the negotiator’s position. The U.S. will have less power to press for compromises when the negotiators can point to the necessity of getting hardliners’ backing for any agreement.