Pakistanis mediate in disputes within the Iranian government, Asim Munir (supporter of carpet wea...

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 Wednesday, 26 Farvardin 1405, April 15, 2026. The chief of staff of the Pakistani army, Mr. Asim Munir, went to Tehran today, and it is said that the main purpose of his trip is to arrange for the second round of negotiations between Iran and America to be held in Islamabad at the end of this week. Mr. Asim Munir, who is a field marshal, or rather a five-star senior general, is in a sense the most powerful person in Pakistan, because the army is extremely influential there. There is a well-known saying that Pakistan

0:57 is not a country that has an army, but an army that has a country. He was also at one point the head of military intelligence, and later the head of the army's intelligence organization (he said "the American army," then corrected himself to the Pakistani army), which is the most important and most influential part of the army. Now he is the head of the entire army, and one can say that, in practice, political developments and the moves of the government and so on are under the army's influence. In any case, it is widely said that this same Mr. Asim Munir is the person who has in practice been seeking to empower Mr. Ghalibaf in Iran, and that he has recommended him to the Americans and to Trump personally, and

1:58 has put his finger on him as the man who can unify Iran, take power and, in short, become Iran's number one. But these negotiations, which are being talked about for the end of the week, are taking place at a time when the head of the Pakistani government, Mr. Shehbaz Sharif, is also on a trip around the region, to Saudi Arabia and Qatar. On the other hand, 15,000 Pakistani military personnel have also gone to Saudi Arabia under the military pact they signed with Saudi Arabia in 2025. A trip to Turkey is also on the agenda, and

2:53 in short, Pakistani diplomacy has become very active. Meanwhile, since Monday Mr. Trump has ordered a naval blockade of Iran, and it is said that this blockade is for Iranian oil tankers, while commercial ships bringing, say, food, medicine and so on are allowed to come to Iran's ports, the 35 ports we have along our entire coastline. At the same time, with the large forces America has sent, and there is talk that several thousand more troops will be added to the American forces,

3:51 the American military claims that yesterday it brought 20 ships and today 25 ships safely through the Strait of Hormuz, and has in practice opened the route through the Strait of Hormuz. Of course, the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters in Iran, which is responsible for the war, has threatened that if our ports are threatened and ships cannot in effect move, then across the entire region of the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman nobody else will be able to export or import anything either. That is the threat it made. We don't know whether they can actually carry out this threat,

4:46 because the Americans say that with the equipment we have brought in, we will no longer allow them to threaten ships or close the strait. Some say Iran can do it; hitting a commercial ship is no big deal. The Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters' threat is not even limited to the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman; it has even mentioned the Red Sea, and naturally the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, where it has done this before through the Houthis. Whether the negotiations will take place at all, or the fire of war will flare up again, and whether they will reach a result or not: there are many questions ahead.

5:42 Among them, one of the difficulties of reaching an agreement is that on the Iranian side, consensus and the emergence of a decision have run into trouble. It is said that in the previous round of negotiations, out of the Islamic Republic's delegation of 70 or 80 people, leaving aside bodyguards, journalists and so on, 30 people were in the room to make decisions. They had taken a hall in that same hotel, and every response the Pakistanis brought for the Iranian delegation to answer, these 30 people would argue over together for hours, to the point that fights broke out among them and there was shouting and yelling, and the Pakistanis intervened to

6:37 calm down this shouting and these disputes within the Iranian delegation. It is said that one of the points where there was a fierce fight was over the proxy forces. The Foreign Ministry people believed that we had to back down and, to use the phrase Mr. Zarif used to say, not give the battlefield precedence over diplomacy. But they faced fierce opposition from parts of the delegation, the security forces accompanying the delegation and the Quds Force people, and it came to a fight. And then, although the plan was for the American and Iranian delegations to stay on to work on the details and prepare a document, through the mediation of the Pakistanis

7:29 the Iranian delegation was sent back to Iran because of the severe disagreements among them. In any case, this is the picture that exists within the Iranian regime, and I personally very much doubt that Ghalibaf, even with doping from the Pakistanis and Trump, can settle these disagreements once and for all and, in effect, have the final say. Although the Iranian delegation says that the final say belongs to Mojtaba Khamenei, the Leader, and that we go to Tehran and he must give his opinion, there is a great deal of doubt about this too. Apart from the question of whether Mojtaba is even alive or dead, in a coma, conscious or unconscious, whatever the case may be, even if he were to come and sit behind the desk healthy, fit and well,

8:29 whether he could, like his father, bring these different factions together and have his word become, so to speak, the final word is seriously in doubt. And if this war ends in whatever way and the quasi-war goes away, the war that naturally unites the regime's people to some extent, I think these disagreements will show themselves very sharply. For example, just look at the fights between Ghalibaf and Saeed Jalili. On the Principlists' side, it was Jalili who came out on top, and Ghalibaf could not gain a position in the presidential election either. In the last election, with all the fraud, number-fabrication and so on,

9:26 the Paydari people had the upper hand, and the Jalili–Ghalibaf problem will not be solved except by force. I'm giving this just as an example; one could give dozens of such examples. But another question that arises is: where is Mr. Pezeshkian? He is the head of the government. He is the president. Under the constitution he is the second person in the country, and more importantly, under the constitution he is the head of the Supreme National Security Council, which is in fact responsible for making decisions. Mr. Pezeshkian, who one can say is completely absent these days, is said to be, as he himself said in a speech, sitting up at night crying, and in fact he is apparently suffering from nervous tension, which

10:21 is serious, and he even cries during the day. In practice, the events in the country, the war, inflation, the destruction and so on, have been beyond Pezeshkian's capacity, and he is not that powerful figure who could play a role now and, as head of the government and head of the Supreme National Security Council, push matters forward. And the killing of people like Ali Larijani or Kamal Kharrazi by the Israelis, in my opinion, by removing these so-called moderate figures, who had experience in negotiation, political decision-making, statecraft and so on, has also contributed to the chaos that now exists in the regime's

11:18 decision-making. In any case, we have to see whether, despite all of this, with Mr. Asim Munir's trip to Iran and the Pakistanis' mediation, these disputes between Iran and America at the negotiating table will really be laid to rest in an agreement or not, and whether it can reach peace or not. It is truly shrouded in ambiguity. Meanwhile, Mr. Abdolnaser Hemmati, the governor of the Central Bank, is also reporting that if the destruction of the mother factories, such as steel or petrochemicals and so on, is not repaired, then the downstream industries that are

12:15 consumers of their products will have no materials to work with. There is talk of around 1.8 to 2 million additional unemployed on top of the country's existing army of unemployed, and dozens, even hundreds, of other factories will also shut down. Meanwhile, the government spokesperson, Ms. Mohajerani, also stated that the initial estimate of the damage to the country's equipment, buildings and factories is more than 270 billion dollars. Of course, if we also take into account lost profits, the idling of downstream factories and the economic blows,

13:13 the figure will probably be above 500 or 600 billion dollars. Meanwhile, the newspaper Donya-ye Eqtesad has done a good scientific study which says that for the year 1405, if an agreement is reached right now and the shadow of war is lifted, the inflation rate is projected to be 49 percent, something around last year's level, a little lower or higher. But if there is this state of no war, no peace, as after the 12-day war, and this state of uncertainty continues, then in 1405 we should expect 67 percent inflation, and if there is war, hyperinflation, at a rate of 123 percent.

14:07 That is what this newspaper has projected, in a study that one can say economists broadly endorse, although Kayhan newspaper, Mr. Hossein Shariatmadari's paper, responded to this study today with insults, accusations and fabrications. In hope of victory for Iran and Iranians.