Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, would have to approve any final deal with the U.S. through secret courier networks while remaining in hiding as a “designated target,” counterterrorism experts said Tuesday.

The unprecedented arrangement, they claimed, means Washington is negotiating a high-stakes accord with an entirely invisible counterparty, with a potential memorandum signed by a regime leader and a “designated target” who can never publicly show his face.

“Khamenei is a designated target, and every confirmed sighting is a coordinate,” Dr. Omar Mohammed told Fox News Digital.

“The courier system used for messaging is not transitional. It is the operating system of his rule.

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“Any deal the United States signs will have to be designed for a permanently invisible counterparty whose enforcement depends on his continued survival. That is not arms control as it has been conventionally understood. It is a memorandum signed under American military pressure, with a regime whose leader cannot show his face.”

Mohammed’s remarks came after Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained to reporters in India why the deal was suffering delays.

“It’s just the response,” Rubio said. “I mean, when you get down on some of these things, you’ve got to hear back, and it takes the Iranians — takes them a little while longer to get back,” he explained.

“That is Secretary Rubio confirming the courier latency on the record,” said Dr. Omar Mohammed, director of the Antisemitism Research Initiative Program on Extremism at George Washington University. “Rubio is describing a structural feature of negotiating with a supreme leader no one can locate.

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“Mojtaba is in hiding, messages are moving by courier, and responses are arriving days late.

“Rubio just confirmed the symptom, and the administration is being honest about the problem. The question is whether the framework can be designed to survive it,” Mohammed claimed.

Khamenei has spent nearly three months in hiding as tensions with the U.S. escalate.

He went underground as soon as a strike on Feb. 28 killed his father, amid reports that he was gravely injured.

He was struck in Operation Epic Fury — “wounded and likely disfigured,” according to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. His wife and son were killed in the same strike.

“Officials at the highest levels of the Iranian government do not know where he is,” Mohammed said, meaning every piece of information he receives is “dated, and his responses come with significant latency.”

The remarks come as Iran and the United States continue talks aimed at reaching a deal to end the war that began Feb. 28.

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“If there’s going to be a deal, we’re going to have to work through that. But this is, you know, it’s either going to be a good deal or there isn’t going to be one,” Rubio said Tuesday.

A senior administration official said the U.S. is prepared to ease sanctions if Iran makes major concessions on uranium enrichment. Frozen Iranian assets have also emerged as a key hurdle.

Iran said Monday that no agreement with the United States was imminent, despite progress toward a framework in talks.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said the focus of talks remained ending the war on all fronts, including Lebanon, and that a possible memorandum of understanding did not include specific details on managing the Strait of Hormuz.

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“The real question for Washington is not how fast the framework can be signed,” Mohammed added.

“It is also what enforcement looks like when the counterparty’s signature comes through a courier.”

Moscow’s envoy accuses Washington of failing to honour commitments under the 1947 UN Headquarters Agreement.

Russia has slammed the United States for failing to grant a visa to Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Alimov to attend a United Nations Security Council meeting in New York, calling the decision a breach of Washington’s obligations.

Vassily Nebenzia told the Security Council on Tuesday that the country should have been represented by Alimov – “who oversees matters related to the United Nations” – at the meeting.

“However, despite all of our attempts to persuade the US side to issue a visa to him, that visa was ultimately not granted,” Nebenzia said.

The 1947 agreement that established the international body’s headquarters in New York requires the US to issue visas to foreign diplomats looking to attend UN functions “without charge and as promptly as possible”.

Nebenzia said not granting a visa to Alimov is a violation of that treaty and also a slight to Beijing, which is chairing the Security Council in May.

“We view this not just as a breach by Washington of its obligations under United Nations Headquarters Agreement, according to which access to United Nations needs to be provided for all officials and member states, barring none, but we also view this as an egregious instance of disrespect for the Chinese presidency of the Security Council,” he said.

The US Department of State did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

The visa controversy comes at a time of receding tensions between Washington and Moscow as US President Donald Trump pushes to end the war in Ukraine.

Trump has been regularly speaking with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. But Washington has continued to enforce sanctions against Moscow over the Ukraine invasion.

Both Putin and Trump have separately visited China and met with its president, Xi Jinping, in recent weeks.

Earlier this week, Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Abbas Araghchi, the country’s top diplomat, cancelled his participation in Tuesday’s Security Council meeting due to visa issues.

During last year’s UN General Assembly, in September 2025, the US imposed strict limits on the movement of the Iranian delegation in New York.

In 2019, the US also delayed then-Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s visa for the General Assembly but eventually granted him entry.

BEIRUT (AP) — An Israeli airstrike on a village in eastern Lebanon killed 12 people, state media said Tuesday, as an Israeli official said the military had called up more troops to Lebanon.

The strike hit the village of Mashghara in the Bekaa Valley late Monday, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency.

It came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he had authorized more intensive strikes targeting the Hezbollah militant group across Lebanon. The Israeli military did not comment on this particular strike, but said Monday that it was targeting Hezbollah infrastructure in eastern Lebanon.

An Israeli security official said the military had called up an additional battalion to Lebanon. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Rescue workers say that a dozen bodies were pulled out of the rubble following an intense wave of overnight strikes targeting swaths of southern and eastern Lebanon.

The intensified attacks come three days before Lebanese and Israeli military delegations are set to meet in Washington for direct talks.

Hezbollah is attacking Israeli troops in southern Lebanon and northern Israeli towns, and has vowed to continue fighting until Israel stops its daily airstrikes and withdraws its troops from the country.

In recent weeks, Hezbollah has boasted that it is using new fiber-optic drones that Israeli troops have struggled to intercept, hitting both Israeli troops and northern border villages.

Israel has updated its defensive guidelines in line with the recent developments in its northern areas, telling people not to gather in large numbers.

“What this requires of us now is to increase the blows, to increase the intensity. We will smite them hip and thigh,” Netanyahu said in a video posted on social media Monday ahead of the strikes.

The Lebanese government hopes that the direct talks with Israel, opposed by Hezbollah, will lead to a ceasefire.

Over a million people in Lebanon have been displaced in the war, which was sparked by Hezbollah firing rockets into northern Israel on March 2 in solidarity with Iran.

3,185 people in Lebanon have been killed in Israeli strikes since the start of the war, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Over 9,600 others have been wounded.

The intensified strikes have brought fear in Lebanon of a renewed full-scale war, leaving the capital exposed to possible strikes again.

“By just saying a few words on TV he (Netanyahu) causes everyone to panic and flee their homes,” said Tony Aboud, in Beirut’s bustling Hamra district. “I don’t know what’s going to happen and how long we can live like this.”

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Associated Press writer Sam Mednick in Tel Aviv, Israel, and senior video producer Malak Harb in Beirut contributed to this report.