More important than it might first appear. And for old-time Kremlin watchers almost like interpreting Politburo positioning on the reviewing stand for hints of power shifts.
From House of Saud, July 1:
‘A Strategic Mistake,’ Say the Clerics Who Chose the Supreme LeaderSixty-two Assembly of Experts members call Hormuz reopening a strategic mistake and classify Trump and Netanyahu as Mahdur al-Dam on MOU Day 14.
TEHRAN — Sixty-two of Iran’s eighty-eight Assembly of Experts members — the constitutional body that installed Mojtaba Khamenei as Supreme Leader in March under what Iran International and Fortune documented as “repeated contacts and psychological and political pressure” from IRGC commanders — have signed a ten-point statement declaring the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz a “strategic mistake,” demanding war compensation and frozen-asset repatriation as preconditions for any settlement, and classifying Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu as “Mahdur al-Dam,” a Shia jurisprudential designation meaning their blood may be shed by any obligated Muslim who gains access to them, with no judicial process required.
The statement, published approximately June 29–30 and reported by Iran Focus and Iran International, represents the first known instance of Assembly of Experts members publicly intervening in active foreign negotiations — a body whose meetings are constitutionally confidential, whose forty-seven-year track record includes zero public challenges to any Supreme Leader, and whose sudden visibility arrives on Day 14 of the sixty-day MOU window with forty-six days remaining. Hours before the statement surfaced, Iran’s Foreign Ministry told Al Jazeera that “we will not have any negotiation meetings at any level with the American side in the coming days.”....
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