President Masoud Pezeshkian used the second anniversary of his government to rule out leaving office. Iranian state media released excerpts on Tuesday, August 4, from a video address titled “Report to the People,” due to air in installments on IRIB. In the released portion, Pezeshkian said that if he ever decided to resign he would announce it himself, that he will not resign and will stand firm, and that his administration is completely coordinated with the armed forces. He said the rumors were meant to manufacture a split — the impression that the Leader says one thing and his government says another. In the version carried by IRNA, he added that everyone knows the armed forces would stand with the Leader if any disagreement arose.
The statement answers a claim made two days earlier by a cleric who holds no office. Mohammad Bagher Kharrazi, secretary-general of a group called Hezbollah of Iran and the brother of the wife of Masoud Khamenei — a younger brother of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei — said in a video carried by Tabnak on Monday that Pezeshkian had resigned or threatened to resign 28 times, and that the Leader had written that if the president did it once more, the resignation would be accepted. Kharrazi said the message had been formally conveyed, and that Pezeshkian no longer dared. He also claimed the Leader intended to replace Mohammad Bagher Zolqadr as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council.
The Leader’s office denied the account without naming him. In a statement from its public relations department, the office said quotations attributed to the Leader had been circulating online, that these were causing public agitation and sowing division, and that the specific claim about his response to a letter from the president was false and contrary to fact from its foundation. The statement said the only authoritative outlets for messages, news and material attributed to the Leader are the official website of his office and the institute for the preservation and publication of his works.
The presidency issued its own denial hours before the video excerpt appeared. Mehdi Tabatabaei, deputy for communications at the president’s office, wrote on X that the resignation claim was baseless and outright false, and described what he called a sinister coalition of lying whisperers and partisans of extremism and imprudence targeting national cohesion. The presidency separately rejected the figure of 28 resignations.
The underlying report is months old and has never been confirmed. On May 31, Iran International — a London-based outlet aligned with the opposition, citing an unnamed source — reported that Pezeshkian had sent a formal letter to the Leader’s office asking to step down, arguing that the IRGC had taken control of key parts of government and that his administration had been excluded from major decisions since the war began in February. Officials denied it at the time. The pattern predates the war: Executive Vice President Mohammad Jafar Qaem-Panah dismissed similar reports as rumors in November 2025, and Pezeshkian himself denied stepping-down reports in February 2025. When the story resurfaced roughly two months ago, Tabatabaei said resignation was not in Pezeshkian’s nature and that conditions in the country did not leave him room to think about it, while chief of staff Mohsen Haji-Mirzaei said there was no gap between the president and senior IRGC commanders, and that decisions in joint sessions had been taken unanimously.
What is new is that the dispute has become an argument inside the conservative camp specifically. The hardline former lawmaker Hamid Rasaei suggested Pezeshkian resign in order to test whether Kharrazi’s account was true. Mojtaba Zarei, a member of the Majles National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, dismissed Rasaei’s jab, noting that out of 90 million Iranians only one man had come forward to vouch for Kharrazi’s claim. Ali Asghar Shafieian, an adviser to the presidency and founder of Ensaf News, wrote that Kharrazi has neither met the Leader nor has any channel to him and is known for unusual accounts, pointing out that Kharrazi had previously accused Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi of a hand in the assassination of Ali Khamenei. Raja News, close to supporters of the late president Ebrahim Raisi, ran the claim under a headline describing a decisive answer from the Leader to a resignation performance.
The episode is legible mainly as a problem of verification. Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen or heard in public since taking office in March; his positions reach the country as written statements, and Araghchi said in a July interview that he had never met him and did not believe more than one or a few people had. In that condition, a claim relayed by a relative with no institutional role can occupy a political week and require public statements from both the president’s office and the Leader’s office. The denial from the Leader’s office was, in substance, a reminder that only two websites may speak for him — an assertion of channel control rather than of content.
The fight over resignation sits on top of a fight over negotiations. Pro-government rallies held nightly since the war began have criticized Pezeshkian and Araghchi over talks with Washington. A letter attributed to Mojtaba Khamenei said that he had in principle held a different view of the memorandum of understanding with the United States, but permitted its signing after Pezeshkian accepted responsibility for it — a formulation that assigns the president both the authority and the blame. Pezeshkian has since described the memorandum as the product of the Supreme National Security Council’s collective judgment rather than his own initiative, and the presidium of the Assembly of Experts has warned in severe terms against the diplomatic track.
On the same day, the president restated his position on the war itself. Pezeshkian said Iran is not seeking to continue or expand the conflict, called war a disease, and said the country would defend its limits against any threat. His comments came as President Trump said negotiations with Iran were underway and Tehran denied that any talks with the United States were scheduled, maintaining that its discussions concern a temporary transit arrangement with Oman.
What the week signals about the institutional balance is modest, and should be read that way. Pezeshkian won a snap election in July 2024 after Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash, and roughly two years of his term remain. His statement resolves nothing about whether he attempted to resign; it establishes that he intends to stay and that he will not concede a public rift. The more durable observation is structural: a president who must periodically deny that he has quit, a Leader whose office must periodically deny words attributed to him, and a security establishment that both of them describe as fully aligned with them. Each denial is plausible on its own. Together they describe a system in which the location of authority is contested enough that its participants have to keep saying it is not.