Ghalibaf's remarks on Khamenei's orders and a wave of fawning over Putin's Russia

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, 5 Aban 1404, October 27, 2025. The remarks of Mr. Ghalibaf, the Speaker of the Majlis, in the open session, and his attack on Rouhani, are another act in the events unfolding in the country. In his speech, Mr. Ghalibaf said, "Let me say it plainly: the comments of Mr. Rouhani and Zarif have damaged the strategic relations between Iran and Russia." The reality, of course, is that Mr. Rouhani and Zarif are now just two ordinary citizens. When they hold no office, whatever opinion they express

0:59 carries no executive weight. So why does Mr. Ghalibaf come out and say these things? I think we actually need to dig a little deeper. First, Khamenei himself is surely aware of this. He is someone who, you could say, has a halter around his neck held by Putin, and he is also very afraid that the Russians might undermine him. He has behaved in such a way that he has become dependent on the Russians down to the bone. He is in fact the one who has set people like Ghalibaf and others in motion to attack people like Rouhani and Zarif and

1:54 others who, in some way, can at least be said not to be pro-Russian, who favor relations with the West and are considered pro-Western. But if we go one layer deeper: this war we now see in the country, inside and outside the Majlis, which Mr. Ghalibaf, some figures in the IRGC and others have started, not only against Rouhani and Zarif but against anyone who favors, say, negotiating with America, resolving problems, the JCPOA and so on, if we want to talk about its orchestration, actually began last week with the article in Sobh-e Sadegh, the IRGC's organ. For the first time, Sobh-e Sadegh wrote in its own editorial that

3:00 Mr. Rouhani must be put on trial. From then on... In fact, even before Sobh-e Sadegh, it was Mr. Lavrov who, as it were, issued the order to attack, when he launched an attack on Zarif, claiming that he was responsible for putting the snapback in place and that Mr. Lavrov had supposedly opposed it. Mr. Zarif, of course, answered him, describing how in those very negotiations he had tried to stab him in the back. In any case, this war actually began with an order to attack from the Russians. As for why the Russians do this, it is their old method. If you look at history, especially the 1940s [the 1320s in the Iranian calendar], when the Tudeh Party of Iran officially championed

3:59 the Soviet Union of that time, to the point that Mr. Ehsan Tabari said in one statement that the true patriot is someone who places the interests of the Soviet Union above national interests. Or the Soviets tried, through their agents in Iran, to formulate it this way: that the headquarters of the world's toilers is the Soviet Union, and that even if we are pursuing national interests, we must pursue the interests of the Soviet Union and the strengthening of the toilers' headquarters against imperialism, the West, and so on. Their well-known method was this: through their publications, their people, the agents they had, if anyone spoke of relations with the West, they would call him a bourgeois, call him a spy; they even called Dr. Mossadegh a feudal lord, and so on

4:57 and so forth, and they tried to crush him with their propaganda machine. It went so far that the Tudeh Party splinter group, the Third Force people, led by Khalil Maleki, who had been in the Tudeh Party's Central Committee and among the Fifty-Three, and who had broken away at the head of a group that could best be described as national socialists, came under the Tudeh Party's propaganda pressure, and they really tried to crush them. That same method, that same approach, remains the guiding model of Putin's Russia today. But let's go one layer deeper still. The point is that not only does Russia want Iran to remain just as it is, dangling and in limbo, at a certain distance

5:52 from the West, and it doesn't even want a war, lest, if Iran is defeated, the victor gets a foothold and a free hand in Iran; rather, it wants Iran to stay in this state of no war, no peace, but at a distance from the West and from the pro-Western countries in the region, hostile to Israel and so on, so that it remains a so-called humiliated, hand-to-mouth country, a card in Mr. Putin's pocket for his deals. But on the other hand, because it appears the Russians have made their decision that, with Khamenei's death or killing, they will eliminate the Guardianship of the Jurist and bring in Putin's own model, a group

6:49 of the corrupt people of this regime, like Ghalibaf, the well-known thieves who are in fact Iran's oligarchy, have caught the scent, and in a race to curry favor with the Russians they are trying to say, "We are ahead of everyone, we attack harder," and thereby say, "Tomorrow, if you are going to choose a Putin, choose us." We can actually see this race happening inside the IRGC, in the Majlis, and in other parts of the regime as well. And so we will probably witness some of these gentlemen, in line with Mr.

7:42 Putin's instructions, also beating the drum of patriotism and the like, because surely, with the elimination of the Guardianship of the Jurist, they will try to strengthen a very extreme nationalist current, like Mr. Putin's own party, which replaced communist ideology with a kind of Russian nationalism. In any case, this race of servility toward Russia, of currying favor with Russia, one end of which is in Khamenei's own pocket, another end of which is the IRGC's orchestration, and whose other end, its command, its tools, are in the hands of Putin's Russia, Mr. Lavrov and others, these are ugly scenes we are witnessing in our country these days.

8:36 Now, Mr. Majid Takht-Ravanchi, the deputy foreign minister, who incidentally was also in the JCPOA negotiations and is known to have been, in a way, the designer of the JCPOA negotiations, revealed that the content of the letter Trump had given to Khamenei was that he had told Khamenei very politely, "Come and let us negotiate and resolve the nuclear issue through negotiation, and if not, there will be war." Mr. Trump later, in various interviews, also brought up the content of this letter in some form and said that, in short, if Iran doesn't come and talk, there will be war. He said it quite quickly there, too. Although IRNA later removed the sentence "there will be war" from this interview with Takht-Ravanchi and said "bad things will happen," still,

9:34 this shows how these gentlemen, again because of their servility to Russia and what the Russians want to do, with the influence they have over Khamenei himself, gave Trump an evasive answer, saying, "We will negotiate indirectly," and in the indirect negotiations they also played games, and you could say they underestimated Trump, with the mistaken analysis that he is not a man of war, that he won't attack and is bluffing. Whereas, first, Trump himself did not wage the war; it was Israel that attacked, and in that way, in 12 days, it wrapped these gentlemen up and dealt them a complete military and intelligence defeat. And second, Trump also helped it, and the part that Israel

10:30 could not do, namely striking Fordow, they did that too. Fundamentally, setting aside the problems Mr. Trump has and the issues on which I, at least, am one of his critics, one point must be kept in mind, and that is that Mr. Trump and the faction behind him in the Republican Party belong to that part of Washington which believes America is the greatest political, military and economic power in the world and must exercise this power in diplomacy and foreign policy, must use force. This point came up after George W. Bush, who was also regarded as a bullying, warlike president. During Mr. Obama's term, this argument was strongly raised in Washington

11:27 that if America does not use the power it has on the world stage, dictators will take over the field, and with mere talk and no threats they will effectively devour the world. In any case, this is one of the well-known debates in Washington. As for Mr. Trump, even if he himself keeps changing what he says or says other things, this point about the faction behind him must be kept in mind, what they call the hawk faction: they firmly believe that America must use its power in the political, economic and military arenas in its diplomacy and negotiations. Now, Molavi Abdolhamid, the Sunni Friday prayer leader of Zahedan, stated in this week's Friday prayers

12:26 that until the constitution is fixed, the political and economic deadlocks will not be resolved. This point has been raised these days by everyone from Molavi Abdolhamid to Engineer Mousavi, from within the regime and from figures on its margins. People like Mr. Nategh-Nouri, Rouhani or Khatami say it in private meetings, but they don't dare say it publicly: that as long as the constitution remains in its current form, and in fact we must say as long as the Guardianship of the Jurist, which is the backbone of the Islamic Republic's constitution, exists, the country's problems will not be solved. This is something that, one can confidently say, many people have come to realize. The only question is the manner of announcing it: either, like Molavi Abdolhamid,

13:26 they say it openly and plainly, or, like Engineer Mousavi, he states it clearly in a statement, or they say it in veiled terms, like Mr. Rouhani. Or Mr. Hashemi had reached the conclusion that the Guardianship of the Jurist had not worked, and that is exactly what led them to drown him. Or else it has been raised in private circles among the country's political circles. In any case, that as long as this constitution exists no reform in any direction is conceivable is a conclusion the nation reached long ago, and the statesmen and officials of the Islamic Republic must be told that, before it is too late, they must side with the people.

14:19 Hoping for the victory of Iran and Iranians.