Iran hardliners attack Araghchi's Hormuz tweet as 'incomplete and misleading'

Hardline voices in Iran have criticised Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi for posting what they called an incomplete and poorly framed tweet announcing the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, Tasnim News Agency reported on April 17.

Araghchi wrote earlier on April 17 that in line with the Lebanon ceasefire, the strait would be fully open to commercial shipping for the remainder of the truce period.

The IRGC-linked agency said the tweet had been published without sufficient accompanying explanation, generating widespread criticism and creating ambiguity about the conditions, details and mechanisms governing passage.

The public dispute is the clearest sign of new factions of power within the IRGC since the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on February 28, as a faction led by Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Aragchi, now believed to be the most powerful faction in the Islamic Republic, led ceasefire talks with US Vice President JD Vance in Pakistan the previous week. 

The IRGC-backed agency stated that several conditions had been attached to the reopening, with the most important being full supervision by Iran's armed forces over ship movements. The passage would be cancelled if the US naval blockade continued.

Publishing the tweet without any verbal explanation or sufficient written detail constituted a lapse in public communication, the agency said.

The foreign ministry should either reconsider how it delivered such announcements, or the secretariat of the Supreme National Security Council should take over communication on the issue and build a more coherent framework for coordinating statements from bodies including the foreign ministry.

Tasnim said tweets from officials were not only read by foreign audiences, even when written in English, and that the Iranian public was also watching events closely. Creating concern or disappointment among the public constituted what it described as "political sin" and a disruption to national unity.