United States officials said Sunday that negotiations between the U.S. and Iran have been slowed in part because Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei is operating from an extremely isolated location that has made communication inside the Iranian government difficult.Iran’s supreme leader “is effectively holed up in an undisclosed location with little access to the outside world and is only reached by a labyrinth of couriers,” according to CBS News, which spoke with U.S. officials.The officials said the difficulty in reaching Khamenei “means there can be a long delay before the U.S. receives a response” after it sends proposed details, and “every piece of information he receives is dated and there’s a lot of latency to his responses.”
The report came one day after President Donald Trump said the most recent peace agreement with Iran “has been largely negotiated,” triggering initial speculation that it would be finalized this weekend. A senior U.S. official later told reporters Sunday that final approval could take days, while Trump reiterated on Truth Social that it hasn’t been “fully negotiated yet.”
Many Republican Senators pushed back on the idea of a deal on Saturday, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS). Trump countered such criticism Sunday by saying “If I make a deal with Iran, it will be a good and proper one.”
