The Sharm el-Sheikh summit and criticism of Khamenei's failed policies from within the regime

What he says

An English translation of the talk, which is in Persian. It was made with AI from YouTube's automatic captions and may contain errors; the Persian transcript is authoritative. Click a timestamp to jump to that part of the video.

0:01 Hello. It is Monday, 21 Mehr 1404, October 13, 2025. Today, under the agenda prepared for Mr. Trump's 20-point plan, 20 Israeli hostages, the last living hostages, were released, and in return 1,968 Palestinian prisoners were released. The bodies of 28 Israeli hostages remain, which they have said they will hand over. So, after two years of war and bloodshed, of the total of 234

0:54 hostages that Hamas had taken, 166 have been freed so far and 68 were killed. This peace, which was naturally met with joy among the people in Israel, in Gaza and in Palestine, was a very blessed and auspicious event, and for now it has effectively ended the two-year war. In Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt, a peace document was also signed by Mr. Trump, the President of the United States, and General el-Sisi, the President of Egypt, together with Mr. Erdoğan, the President of Turkey, and the Emir of Qatar. In the row,

1:54 they sat in the front row, and in the second row were the heads and leaders of more than 14 or 15 countries, including Canada, Germany, France and Britain at the level of prime minister and president, as well as Pakistan, Indonesia, Italy, Spain, Hungary and Greece. From Saudi Arabia, of course, the foreign minister came, along with the King of Jordan, Kuwait, the Deputy Prime Minister of the UAE, and so on and so forth. In any case, it was an important international summit, and their presence as guarantors of this peace and of what has happened was very important.

2:52 Absent from this Sharm el-Sheikh summit were, on one side, the Israeli officials themselves, which of course involved some difficulties, since some Arabs were not willing to be in the meeting with them, and likewise Hamas, whose leaders many of these countries regard as a terrorist organization. And the Islamic Republic of Iran: Egypt had invited Mr. Pezeshkian and Araghchi from Iran to go to Egypt and attend this summit. But last night the Supreme National Security Council held a meeting, and of course all its decisions become binding only with Khamenei's approval, and in fact, by Khamenei's order, going was ruled out and they gave a negative answer.

3:51 Mr. Araghchi wrote on X that we cannot engage with those who attacked the people of Iran and continue to threaten and sanction us. Of course, he did not write under what conditions they would be willing to go and talk and give up this warmongering, this war and hostility with America, the elimination of Israel and so on. In any case, this important international summit, which many have described as a new chapter in the Middle East, and Mr. Trump himself, who can add a feather to his cap and is happier than anyone, talks about how from now on it is the time of peace, and so on and so forth. Among other things, he

4:52 also extended his hand to Iran for peace. Both in the speech he gave this morning at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, and in the one he gave in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt, he mentioned Iran, more than once in fact. And of course, as usual, he said that those American strikes destroyed everything, and so on, and praised himself and the American operation. But, one could perhaps say, in a kindly tone he told the Islamic Republic that we are ready for peace with Iran when they themselves are ready, and when they are ready, the sanctions will also be lifted.

5:49 Mr. Netanyahu also referred to Iran in his remarks in Israel, and of course he, the speaker of their parliament and their president all compared Trump to Cyrus the Great, the founder of Iran. What they mean, of course, is that since Cyrus freed the Children of Israel from Babylon and helped them come out of captivity and return to their ancestral land, they are in effect implying that Mr. Trump has also freed the Israelis and the people there. But this not going is also an important matter; that is, it is a matter bound up with the very existence and fate of our country. Today, interestingly, many of the country's newspapers

6:50 published today criticized it. Writers and journalists inside Iran, in editorials, in contributed articles and so on, criticized why the Islamic Republic lost this opportunity and did not go. Although the remarks and writings are mostly in the third person, everyone knows that this third person is Khamenei himself and that the criticism is in fact directed at him. This is not limited to the Iranian press; one could say that in practically all political circles inside and outside Iran, this criticism is seriously directed at Mr.

7:49 Khamenei personally, whose wrong strategies and wrong policies over the 36 years he has been leader have brought the country to this point. This running into Russia's arms: just today Mr. Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, stated that we will supply Iran's needed military equipment within the framework of cooperation between the two countries, and that we do not accept the return of UN sanctions. Of course, in practice we have seen that at critical moments Russia takes money and concessions from others and leaves Iran empty-handed. But these remarks by Mr. Lavrov today in fact fully

8:46 show, from this side, Khamenei's dependence on Russia as well. But these criticisms of Mr. Khamenei, who has left the country in limbo: he has left a whole nation hanging while he himself has gone into the depths of the earth. As some young people say, he is sitting five meters from the earth's molten core. He has gone underground like this and left the country in limbo. He is neither willing to give up the policy of eliminating Israel, nor the policy of hostility toward America, nor the proxy forces, nor the nuclear saga: he neither builds a bomb nor says where the 60 percent uranium is. A state of

9:41 limbo that has gripped every pillar of the country, and of course its result is crisis, a crisis that shows itself in Iran's economy more than anywhere else. Figures released today show that the country's gross domestic product had negative growth of 3 percent in the first six months of this year, and that it is in fact caught in an economic recession. Last year we had 3.1 percent economic growth, which of course was driven by growth in oil exports, a 6 percent increase in oil exports. But one year is basically not a yardstick; when there is growth year after year, one can say the country is moving forward. Whereas the Islamic Republic has now for nearly two decades been caught in

10:37 stagflation, with zero or negative economic growth. Occasionally it catches its breath for a year, and immediately the next year it turns negative again, on top of which the country also has chronic inflation going back 50 years. In any case, everything Khamenei has said has turned out to be wrong. Every policy he has had has ruined Iran. He now stands at a point where the entire nation is on the opposite side from him, and not only the nation: from within his own regime and its various pillars, voices have been raised that he is taking the country toward collapse. In fact, the only solution Khamenei can think of is repressing the people, executions and threats, and he

11:34 makes no major decisions either. He prefers to keep his head tucked under the arm of Russia, of China, and to look after these mafia gangs that keep his regime in place, so that his disgraceful rule can carry on for a little while longer. But even Mr. Nategh-Nouri has spoken up, and in an interview with the Entekhab website he said that the occupation of the American embassy was a mistake and that things went wrong from there. Bear in mind that it was Khomeini who, after the students' attack on the embassy, said you have made a revolution greater than the first revolution, and Khamenei has continued that same policy. Also, the film "It Was Just an Accident," made by Jafar

12:33 Panahi, which was made secretly in Iran and which won the top prize at the Cannes Festival, was not allowed to be screened in Russia. Instead, in America, at an event in New York, Mr. Panahi held a joint conference with Martin Scorsese, the famous and great filmmaker, whom Panahi called the god of cinema. It brought praise from Mr. Scorsese for Iranian cinema, Panahi's cinema and all of Iran's underground filmmakers, and he asked various networks to broadcast the films of Iranian filmmakers that are made without permits and, in fact, in protest against the regime. Hoping for

13:31 the victory of Iran and Iranians.