New Delhi: A day after former Iran foreign minister Javad Zarif laid out a “comprehensive peace deal” to end the war with US in an essay published in Foreign Affairs magazine, a journalist has released a starkly different private message purportedly sent out by Zarif to an “insider circle of Iranian analysts” in the early stages of the conflict.
The “leaked” message, published by Iranian and US-based journalist Mehdi Parpanchi on Substack Saturday, had called for Tehran to strike American naval vessels, invoked divine intervention, repeatedly referred to a Chinese prophecy of US President Donald Trump’s defeat, and spoke of the Epstein Files.
According to Parpanchi, Zarif sent out the the text, which included a nine-point “proposal”, shortly after US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on 28 May, and killed the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. ThePrint has no independent confirmation of the message’s authenticity.
The view expressed in the “message” stands in contrast to Zarif’s pitch for diplomacy in his essay published in Foreign Affairs on 3 April, where he wrote that Iran could leverage its defensive successes to reach a broader peace agreement.
Zarif, a career diplomat, served as Iran’s foreign minister from 2013 to 2021 under the Hassan Rouhani-led regime. He was part of the team that had negotiated the 2015 nuclear accord that Iran signed with the Barack Obama administration. Trump had withdrawn from the accord during his first term in 2018.
Zarif has no official role in the current dispensation and has been on the periphery of power for the past five years. The Financial Times, in a report, described him as part of a marginalised reformist camp within the existing regime.
FT also quoted a regime insider as saying that Zarif’s essay calling for a diplomatic resolution to the war was only his personal views. The report further said that some hardliners within the regime were unhappy with Zarif for floating a peace plan at all.
Mehdi Parpanchi’s X bio says he is the US director of news at Iran International. The UK-based TV station has been previously linked to Saudi Arabia.
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Take the win & make a deal—what Zarif wrote in 3 April essay
Parpanchi’s Substack revelations were markedly different from Zarif’s essay in Foreign Affairs, titled ‘How Iran should end the war—A deal Tehran could take’.
In the essay, Zarif repeated the Iranian regime’s claim that Tehran was “winning” the war and had maintained leadership continuity despite the scale of US and Israeli bombardment. Iran, he said, could leverage its defensive successes to reach a broader peace agreement.
Zarif noted that some Iranians wanted to “continue fighting until the aggressors are adequately punished” rather than seek a diplomatic ending—a sentiment he called “understandable”.
But, he argued, continued fighting would lead only to further destruction, and a US withdrawal from the conflict before a deal would not allow Iran to translate its military gains into lasting advantage.
“Tehran, then, should use its upper hand not to keep fighting but to declare victory and make a deal that both ends this conflict and prevents the next one,” he wrote.
His proposed framework for peace included reopening the Strait of Hormuz, placing limits on Iran’s nuclear programme, inviting American companies into Iran’s oil sector, and negotiating a permanent nonaggression pact with the US.
“It (Tehran) should offer to place limits on its nuclear programme and to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for an end to all sanctions—a deal Washington wouldn’t take before but might accept now,” Zarif wrote.
He added: “Iran should also be prepared to accept a mutual nonaggression pact with the United States in which both countries pledge to not strike each other in the future. It could offer economic interactions with the United States, which would be a win for both the American and the Iranian people.”
Striking back & call for divine assistance—the ‘leaked message’
In the Substack piece, Parpanchi quoted Zarif as calling for “striking American and Israeli targets, causing damage to American naval vessels” and destroying a bridge between Saudi Arabia and Bahrain—a move he said would create “real deterrence”.
He went on to advocate strikes on the UAE, writing: “The UAE means Israel.”
Zarif then referenced a Chinese prediction of Trump’s defeat, urged the repeated recitation of the call to prayer to invoke divine assistance, and described Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as playing “satanic games”—a charge he linked, without elaboration, to claims in the Epstein Files.
He also argued that Trump should be given an “honourable exit”.
“Seriously, we should pray for the realisation of the prediction of Trump’s defeat (by a Chinese prognosticator). I believe that divine assistance has situational (“quantum”) effects… the call to prayer should be recited repeatedly so that the satanic games of Trump and Netanyahu, which, according to what he said, they began by sacrificing 200 little girls (in the Epstein manner) in order to achieve their vile aims, may be nullified,” the Substack quoted Zarif as writing.
The message also contends that the war could have been avoided had the Trump administration been presented with a proposal it “could not reject”—one that offered “symbolic” measures allowing Washington to claim victory while preserving Tehran’s dignity.
Zarif purportedly further said that he had tried to circulate this strategy before fighting broke out but was ignored by his former colleagues.
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I am surprised the current US administration has not gone after the kin of Iranian politicians and IRGC who live lavishly in the US. This ministers two children who were born in America; so much for ‘death to America’.