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Tehran, Iran<\/strong> \u2013 United States President Donald Trump\u2019s announcements about securing major concessions from Tehran have riled supporters of the Iranian establishment, prompting rejections and clarifications from the authorities.<\/p>\n Several current and former senior officials, state media and the Islamic Republic\u2019s hardcore backers expressed anger, frustration, and confusion after the US leader made a series of claims, with days left on a two-week ceasefire reached on April 8.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Trump on Friday said Iran and the US would jointly dig up the enriched uranium buried under the rubble of bombed Iranian nuclear sites, and transfer it to the US. He claimed Iran had agreed to stop enriching uranium on its soil.<\/p>\n He also said the Strait of Hormuz had been opened and would never be closed again, while the US naval blockade of Iran\u2019s ports remained in place, and sea mines were removed or were in the process of being removed.<\/p>\n Trump also emphasised that Iran would not receive billions of dollars of its own frozen assets abroad due to US sanctions, and that the 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon was completely unrelated to Iran.<\/p>\n Amid Pakistan\u2019s ongoing efforts to mediate another round of negotiations, Iran\u2019s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who led the Iranian delegation to the Islamabad talks earlier this month, rejected all of Trump\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n \u201cWith these lies, they did not win the war, and they certainly will not get anywhere in negotiations either,\u201d he posted on X early on Saturday.<\/p>\n By Saturday noon, the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) released a statement, saying the Strait of Hormuz is once again heavily restricted and under \u201cstrict management\u201d of the armed forces. It cited continued \u201cacts of piracy and maritime theft under the so-called label of a blockade\u201d by Washington as the reason.<\/p>\n In the hours it took between Trump\u2019s flurry of announcements on Friday and official responses from Iranian authorities, supporters of the establishment voiced serious concerns about any major concessions.<\/p>\n \u201cIs there no Muslim out there to talk to the people a bit about what is happening?!\u201d Ezzatollah Zarghami, a former state television chief and current member of the Supreme Cyberspace Council that controls the heavily restricted internet in Iran, wrote on X.<\/p>\n Alireza Zakani, the hardline mayor of Tehran, said if any of Trump\u2019s claims are true, then the Iranian establishment must beware \u201cnot to gift the vile enemy in negotiations what it failed to achieve in the field\u201d.<\/p>\n A fan account on X for Saeed Jalili, an ultrahardline member of the Supreme National Security Council who has opposed any deals with the US for decades, said \u201cdissent\u201d may be at play. It said Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not been seen or heard from outside of several written statements attributed to him, must release a voice or video message to confirm what is happening.<\/p>\n Jalili\u2019s main account distanced itself from the comment, saying the fan account \u2013 which was subsequently deleted \u2013 was a sign of \u201cinfiltration\u201d by enemies of Iran who were trying to sow discord.<\/p>\n Iranian state media released another written statement attributed to Khamenei on Saturday to mark Army Day, but made no mention of the political drama unfolding hours earlier, or the negotiations with the US.<\/p>\n The dissonance was clearly on display on state television and other state-linked media on Friday, especially those affiliated with the IRGC.<\/p>\n Multiple state television hosts and analysts harshly attacked Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi because he tweeted on Friday that the Strait of Hormuz was \u201cdeclared completely open for the remaining period of ceasefire, on the coordinated route as already announced by Ports and Maritime Organisation\u201d.<\/p>\n One of the hosts demanded Araghchi must immediately clarify. Another said the top diplomat\u2019s tweet was in English, and since the Iranian people do not have access to X due to the state-imposed near-total internet shutdown for seven weeks, the message was not directed at the people.<\/p>\n With a huge Hezbollah flag in the background, a furious presenter on state television\u2019s Channel 3 claimed that Araghchi was somehow \u201cthe representative of the people of Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq\u201d because they are a part of Iran\u2019s \u201caxis of resistance\u201d of armed forces, so he should demand concessions on their behalf from Trump.<\/p>\n Morteza Mahmoudvand, a representative for Tehran in the Iranian parliament, went as far as saying Araghchi would have been impeached had it not been for \u201cthe excuse of war\u201d.<\/p>\n The Fars and Tasnim news sites, which are affiliated with the IRGC, also heavily criticised Araghchi and called for further explanations on Friday evening, with Fars arguing that \u201cIranian society was plunged into a haze of confusion.\u201d<\/p>\n Critical comments from supporters of the Iranian government also flooded social media, including local messaging applications and the comments section of state-run sites.<\/p>\n \u201cWe took to the streets every night with clear demands, but you shook hands with the killer of our supreme leader and handed our strait to the Zionists,\u201d one user wrote on Friday in the local app Baleh, in reference to Israel.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter all these years of sanctions and war and costs imposed on the people, if you are to give up the uranium and the strait, then why did you play with the people\u2019s livelihoods and the blood of the martyrs for so long?\u201d another user wrote.<\/p>\n A large number of analysts and media personalities, including Hossein Shariatmadar, the head of the Kayhan newspaper, who was appointed by late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also voiced criticism and demanded answers on Fars and other outlets.<\/p>\n Regardless of whether there will be more mediated negotiations in Pakistan or whether the war will continue, Iran continues to encourage and arm backers to take to the streets to maintain control.<\/p>\n State media on Friday aired footage of more armed convoys moving through the streets of Tehran while waving the flags of Lebanon\u2019s Hezbollah, Iraq\u2019s Hashd al-Shaabi and other groups. The video below shows women and children crewing heavy machineguns mounted on the back of pick-up trucks during a rally in downtown Tehran.<\/p>\n With no end in sight to the state-imposed internet shutdown that has wiped out millions of jobs in Iran, in addition to steel factories and other infrastructure that were destroyed, the Iranian economy continues to suffer.<\/p>\n The timing of the back-and-forth between Trump and the Iranian officials meant that oil prices dropped before Western markets closed on Friday, and the Iranian currency experienced more volatility.<\/p>\n The rial was priced at about 1.46 million against the US dollar on Saturday morning, the first day of the working week in Iran. But it shot back up to about 1.51 million after the IRGC announced the repeated closure of the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Tehran, Iran \u2013 United States President Donald Trump\u2019s announcements about securing major concessions from Tehran have riled supporters of the Iranian establishment, prompting rejections and clarifications from the authorities. Several current and former senior officials, state media and the Islamic Republic\u2019s hardcore backers expressed anger, frustration, and confusion after the US leader made a series […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
\u2018Haze of confusion\u2019<\/h2>\n
Armed supporters in the streets<\/h2>\n
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