Iran's foreign ministry under fire for denial of Musk meeting

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has faced accusations of lying to appease Iran's ultra-hardliners after his emphatic denial on Saturday of reports about a meeting between Iran's UN ambassador and Elon Musk.

The denial has widely been interpreted as a reaction to hardline Kayhan newspaper’s Saturday attack on the foreign policy apparatus for the meeting.

In an article titled “Secret Meeting with Trump’s Representative: Naivety or Treason,” Kayhan accused Iran’s reformists and “agents of the West’s war against Iran” of laying the groundwork for negotiations with the United States, which it referred to as the “terrorist regime,” through such actions.

The newspaper is financed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's office and overseen by ultra-hardliner Hossein Shariatmadari, a Khamenei appointee whom reformists consider their sworn enemy. 

“Dear Mr. Araghchi, [the Iranian] people’s stances should be your yardstick not Kayhan newspaper’s headlines,” Mohammad-Ali Abtahi, a former reformist vice president, tweeted Sunday.

Abtahi criticized the foreign policy apparatus for staying silent for nearly three days about the meeting—a topic widely discussed with interest and seen by some as a potential step toward easing US sanctions. He noted that officials only issued a denial after Kayhan launched its attack on the move.

“Stay true to being Pezeshkian’s and the people’s foreign minister,” Abtahi wrote, urging Araghchi not to shape his positions based on reactions from ultra-hardliners. He argued that the public voted for Masoud Pezeshkian, not his ultra-hardliner rival Saeed Jalili.

“There is nothing more pathetic than a government adjusting and announcing its positions, confirmations, and denials based on the threats and attacks of pulp media and pressure groups,” Hossein Selahvarzi, a former president of Iran's Chamber of Commerce, protested in a tweet Sunday.

The report of the rare meeting was welcomed not only by reformist media—one outlet even dubbing it “the Elon channel [for talks]”—but also by some moderate conservatives.

“The meeting could mark the beginning of a new path in our country’s foreign policy,” the conservative Jomhouri Eslami newspaper wrote on Saturday.

In a live interview broadcast on state television Saturday evening, Araghchi denied reports of a meeting between Ambassador Amir-Saeid Iravani and Trump advisor Elon Musk. The meeting was first reported by The New York Times on Thursday and later corroborated, with minor variations, by the Associated Press and CBS News.

The Iranian foreign minister called the report a fabricated scenario possibly aimed at testing Iran's reaction. After the denial, Shariatmadari thanked Araghchi on Sunday, but insisted that the denial of what he called "devastating news" came too late.

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei had “categorically” denied the meeting in what appeared to be a brief exclusive interview with the official news agency IRNA earlier Saturday.

Neither Musk nor President-elect Donald Trump's team have commented on the meeting. Skeptical critics from across the political spectrum argue, that this is proof the meeting had really taken place and the foreign ministry’s “categorical” denial could not be trusted.

“The public has every right to suspect that the meeting did take place but was intended to remain confidential, and that our Foreign Ministry spokesperson denied it only because the American side complained about the leak,” tweeted Mehdi Ghasemzadeh, a hardliner commentator and social media activist, on Saturday.

He also argued that the delay in refuting the New York Times report had helped establish the “American media’s narrative” on the matter. 

A former official of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government, Mohammad-Javad Mohammadzadeh, also suggested in a tweet that the foreign ministry’s denial of the meeting was false and cited Araghchi’s “correction” of a Pezeshkian remark about Iran's preparedness to reduce tensions with Israel during his UNGA visit in New York in September as another example of false denials of Pezeshkian’s government.

Others have noted that false denials by Iran's foreign policy apparatus are not unprecedented, citing several instances in recent years. These include the denial of Israel’s removal of a massive cache of nuclear documents from a facility near Tehran in 2018, the refutation of reports about secret talks in Oman in 2013 between Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s foreign policy adviser Ali-Akbar Velayati and the US, and the denial of the Revolutionary Guards’ active involvement in the Syrian war alongside Bashar al-Assad's forces in 2011.