Trump admin plans 50% cut to State Department funding - NYT
The Trump administration is considering a proposal to cut nearly 50 percent of the State Department's funding for the upcoming fiscal year, The New York Times reported.
The Trump administration is considering a proposal to cut nearly 50 percent of the State Department's funding for the upcoming fiscal year, The New York Times reported.
Even before the talks resumed, Mahmood Nabavian, vice chairman of the Iranian parliament’s National Security Committee, had begun taking positions that diverged from the hardline Paydari Party’s stance on both domestic and foreign policy.
As recently as last week, hardliners in the Iranian parliament (Majles) and Friday Prayer imams continued to insist that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei opposed any negotiations with the United States. They maintained that there was no possibility of Iran engaging in talks with anyone from the Trump administration.
That changed on Saturday, April 12, when Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met with Trump’s special envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, in Oman. By Monday, it became clear that the meeting had been more substantial than initially disclosed—despite Araghchi’s earlier statements, the two officials had held a face-to-face meeting lasting about 45 minutes.
Iranian hardliners had expected Khamenei to react—perhaps with public disapproval or at least a symbolic rebuke of his foreign minister. But instead, the Supreme Leader remained silent.
At the Majles, ultraconservative lawmaker Hamid Rasaei declared, in a less than happy tone, that the talks had taken place with Khamenei’s full endorsement. Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the hardline daily Kayhan, echoed the sentiment, insisting the meeting would not have occurred without the Supreme Leader’s explicit approval.
This left the ultraconservatives with little ground to stand on regarding the negotiations. Still, pockets of resistance remained in the Majles. Outspoken hardliner Mehdi Kouchakzadeh shouted that the legislature had been kept in the dark about the talks. Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf quickly cut him off, insisting that the Majles was fully informed. Other lawmakers looked on in silence, their expressions unreadable.
Some hardliners such as Nabavian supported the talks as something that was backed by Khamenei but lambasted Araghchi for meeting with Witkoff breaking his promise of not holding direct talks.
On Monday, the moderate conservative website Khabar Online and the reformist, pro-Pezeshkian daily Etemad published detailed reports on the ultraconservatives’ anger over the negotiations, highlighting what they described as a new rift within Iran’s hardline camp.
Khabar Online reported that the ultraconservatives have fractured into several factions. Some figures, it noted, were so enraged that their public remarks included direct insults toward the negotiators. Meanwhile, other conservatives such as Naghavi Hosseini, along with centrists like Mansoor Haghighatpour, criticized the hardliners opposing the talks, branding them "infiltrators who seek to polarize Iranian society."
Abbas Amirifar, a cleric close to former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, accused the ultraconservatives of dishonesty, saying they only pretend to be obedient to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Former lawmaker Gholamali Imanabadi went further, calling them "traitors." From the reformist camp, cleric Mohsen Rohami claimed, "If there were a referendum on negotiating with America, 98 percent of Iranians would vote in favor of the talks."
Khabar Online revealed that many prominent conservatives have repeatedly expressed their support for negotiations with the United States. Even Ali Khezrian, a staunch supporter of Paydari Party at the Majles has defended the negotiations saying that "America has been weakened under Tump and it is now time to negotiate with it."
Others like hardline cleric Mojtaba Zolnouri who had set fire to copies of the 2015 nuclear agreement at the Majles have also supported the talks. Zolnouri said: "We live under the shadow of the Supreme Leader. We will accept whatever he wants."
Curiously, one prominent ultraconservative figure—former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili—has remained conspicuously silent on the ongoing talks. He has not commented on the negotiations themselves, nor on the exchange of letters between Trump and Khamenei that preceded them.
Some Iranian media outlets speculate that Jalili may be mobilizing his "infantry"—a reference to the vigilante groups often active in Tehran and other cities—for a potential street campaign. Another theory circulating among reporters in Tehran is that Jalili is confident the current round of talks will ultimately fail. A third possibility is that he has been instructed by authorities to stay silent for now.
Nonetheless, Jalili still wields influence. His brother Vahid oversees state television, which has maintained its anti-US tone despite the launch of formal negotiations. Media analysts note that state TV continues to give airtime to commentators openly opposed to the talks and to US policy in the region.
A real shift in Khamenei’s stance on negotiations, some observers argue, would only be evident if state television—and Tehran’s hardline newspapers—begin to change their messaging.
Early on Sunday, dissident lawyer and civil activist Hassan Younesi posted on X that he had heard “some groups and organizations stationed at the embassy building … have been ordered to evacuate it.” The post quickly drew attention, partly because Younesi’s father, Ali Younesi, served as intelligence minister under reformist President Mohammad Khatami.
Hours later, however, Younesi deleted the post and published a follow-up, saying he had been contacted by what he called “responsible authorities” who denied the reports and said his post had created the mistaken impression that preliminary steps were being taken to prepare the embassy for a handover.
Such deletions by political activists and media figures—often under pressure from security agencies—are not uncommon in Iran.
Some users suggested that a potential handover could pave the way for American investments in Iran, especially after President Masoud Pezeshkian commented recently that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had “no objection” to American investors entering the Iranian market.
“Why would Trump push for direct talks unless it’s about reopening the embassy?” one user posted. “How else can US companies invest here?”
Former Israeli official and spokesperson Ben Sabeti also weighed in on X: “Iran makes cheap gestures toward @POTUS for the success of negotiations? There are reports about the US Embassy in Tehran being vacated for the first time since 1979. Is the regime also ready to make nuclear concessions?”
Meanwhile, Iranian media—highly constrained by censorship—picked up Younesi’s now-deleted post, but offered minimal commentary. “If true, this is a very meaningful step,” read a brief article titled What’s the story of the evacuation of the US Embassy building? published by Rouydad24 on Sunday. Fararu, another popular online outlet, published a gallery of recent photos showing foreign tourists visiting the former embassy, under the headline US Embassy in Tehran Draws Attention Again on Day of Talks—without offering any further remarks.
The US embassy takeover forty-six years ago
Islamist students occupied the embassy in November 1979. The students held tens of American diplomats and other staff hostage for 444 days. The embassy compound, which the students called “Den of Spies”, however, has been used as a base by IRGC-affiliated groups, including the Basij militia and its affiliated Daneshjoo (Student) News Agency.
Other parts of the building were converted into a museum and opened to the public in recent years. The Swiss embassy has represented US interests in Iran in the past forty-six years.
Calls for normalization of relations and re-opening of the embassy
In recent years, various Iranian political and media figures have supported the idea of restoring diplomatic ties with the United States and returning the embassy building after decades of occupation.
Most recently, reformist politician and cleric Mohsen Rohami suggested in an interview published by Khabar Online that Iran and the United States could re-open their embassies and that higher officials than foreign ministers could sit at the negotiation table.
“This will have a positive psychological impact, besides its practical outcome, on our society and neighbors,” Khabar Online on Sunday quoted Rohami, who served as the legal deputy of Pezeshkian’s campaign last year, as saying.
Back in August 2024, Mehdi Ghazanfari, head of the National Development Fund, called for the reestablishment of consular relations with the United States. He controversially blamed the Communist Tudeh Party for provoking the 1979 embassy seizure and urged the Pezeshkian administration to act fast before what he called his political rivals' honeymoon with him ended.
His suggestion was echoed by some other politicians and public figures including Mohammad-Hossein Khoshvaght, a former official of the Islamic Guidance Ministry and managing director of Fararu. Khoshvaght has close ties to Khamenei’s household through the marriage of his sister to Khamenei’s eldest son, Mostafa.
Khoshvaght contended that normalization of relations could benefit both countries. "An Iran that has normal relations with the United States is a nightmare for Russia and Israel; for Putin, an Iran with nuclear weapons is less dangerous than an Iran that has normal relations with the United States!" he wrote on X.
In a 2015 interview with The Guardian, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said reopening the embassy was “not impossible” if both sides changed their behavior. Similarly, in a 2014 interview with Swiss TV during the Davos Forum, President Hassan Rouhani said animosity with the United States could eventually turn into friendship.
The report cited an internal memo about a proposal to eliminate almost all funding for international organizations like the United Nations and NATO, ending the budget for supporting international peacekeeping operations and curtailing all of the department’s educational and cultural exchanges, like the Fulbright Program.
It said that it is uncertain whether the drastic cuts proposed in the memo would gain approval in the Republican-controlled Congress.
Among the proposed cuts, the report said, the memo outlines a pay and hiring freeze through fiscal 2026, with exceptions for any hires necessary to oversee foreign aid programs transferred from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being disbanded.
The report added that the memo seeks to reduce foreign aid spending by more than 50 percent of the current budget levels for both the State Department and USAID.
The State Department will request a $28.4 billion budget for fiscal year 2026, $26 billion less than the allocation for fiscal year 2025, according to the memo.
The report said that the Trump administration also plans to claw back some funds for the current fiscal year, seeking to reclaim approximately $20 billion in unspent funds from fiscal year 2025 to return to the Treasury.
The report did not specify whether Iran-related programs were included in the cuts.
Over the years, USAID has been a donor to Iranians in the diaspora to strengthen freedom of speech and free flow of information.
A part of the US funds also covers the expenses of Virtual Private Network (VPN) services which ordinary Iranians used to circumvent the Islamic Republic’s censorship.
Official government figures show Washington is the world's biggest donor of international aid, spending $39 billion in the 2024 fiscal year, out of which $65 million was allocated to funding State Department-administered Near East Regional Democracy (NERD).
The body is the main foreign assistance channel through which the United States has supported civil society and human rights in Iran since 2009, according to the .
The report added that it was not immediately clear if Secretary of State Marco Rubio had endorsed the memo which NYT said was dated April 10.
In late March, Iran International learnt that the US government resumed nearly all Iran-related aid programs that were paused under President Donald Trump’s executive order in January this year.
