US-Iran deal could hand Tehran more than $60bn a year in oil revenue - WSJ

A state-linked religious singer in Shahr-e Rey threatened President Masoud Pezeshkian with death if the conditions set by Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei over the US memorandum are not fulfilled.

The threat came a day after Khamenei said he had held a different view on the agreement with Washington but authorized its implementation after Pezeshkian accepted responsibility for it.

“Mr. President, if the Leader’s conditions are not fulfilled, then it will be us, the blade and your throat,” the religious singer said.

In Iran, such performers, known as maddahs, are religious singers and reciters who lead mourning chants in Shiite ceremonies, but some have also become influential political voices aligned with hardline and security-linked networks.

Kamyar Behrang, a member of Iran International’s editorial team, said these figures are “not merely elegy reciters,” but part of the Islamic Republic’s security and repression apparatus, with links to institutions such as the Revolutionary Guards.

Mohsen Rezaei, a military adviser to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei and a former IRGC commander, warned that any final text for a US-Iran agreement must be technically and legally precise, saying Tehran should guard against wording that Washington could later interpret narrowly.

Rezaei said the language on sanctions relief must be carefully drafted and that any provision on lifting the blockade should be stated explicitly.

He pointed to a possible loophole in one of the 14 points of the memorandum, saying Iran had demanded that US forces withdraw from areas around Iran within 30 days of a final agreement.

“But they may say that ‘around you’ means the 12 nautical miles of your coastal waters,” Rezaei said, adding that such an interpretation would be unacceptable to Tehran.

The long-running conservative Ettelaat newspaper said the memorandum between Tehran and Washington had helped prevent a wider war but offered no guarantee of long-term stability.

The newspaper said that after the formal signing of the memorandum, the central question was whether it could survive and whether Donald Trump’s United States could be trusted to continue the path toward a final agreement.

She said the memorandum had postponed key issues to the future, with both sides choosing first to prevent the crisis from escalating before entering more complex bargaining.

The article argued that the memorandum contained many positive points for Iran and said Trump’s comments on the sidelines of the G7 summit about Iran’s frozen assets and the continuation of its nuclear program were unexpectedly positive.

But it said the memorandum was “more the beginning of a new phase of managed rivalry” than the end of a crisis, adding that the memorandum had no guarantee of long-term durability and functioned more as a tool to prevent a wider war and control energy markets.

She also argued that Trump, who wanted a quick victory, was forced to shift his position once it became clear Iran would not surrender.

The article described the signing of the memorandum without taking Benjamin Netanyahu’s concerns into account as his biggest security defeat since the October 7, 2023 attack.

The United States and Qatar are working on a plan that could give Iran access to billions of dollars in frozen funds for humanitarian spending, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The plan, which has not been finalized, would initially allow Tehran to use $6 billion held in Qatar to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian goods, the report said.

The funds are part of Iran’s estimated $100 billion in cash frozen worldwide, much of it revenue from oil sales locked up overseas under sanctions, according to the Journal.

Under the proposed mechanism, Iran’s central bank would be able to order humanitarian goods using the previously frozen funds, with transfers carried out under international supervision.

The Journal said the plan remains in its early stages and has not yet been agreed to by Tehran.

The proposal would mark another early financial incentive under the recently signed US-Iran memorandum, while stopping short of giving Tehran unrestricted access to the money.

A Tehran lawmaker said Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei had expected more from the 14-point memorandum with Washington, adding to pressure on Iran’s negotiating team not to show flexibility in the next phase of talks.

Esmail Kowsari, a member of parliament from Tehran, told Khaneh Mellat, parliament’s news agency, that Khamenei’s message showed he believed more issues could have been included in the framework.

He said Khamenei had nevertheless agreed that the negotiating team should continue the talks under the current conditions, but warned that Iran must not retreat before what he called the enemy.

Kowsari said negotiators should remember that the United States proposed a ceasefire and talks from a “very fragile” position and needed the process.

“In the continuation of the negotiations, they must act in a way that America never feels the Islamic Republic of Iran needs negotiations with US,” he said.

Kowsari said Iran remained the real winner of the confrontation and was still negotiating from a position of power.