In a March 30 speech, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, criticized those who think “the world of tomorrow is a world of discourse, not missiles,” declaring it “treasonous” if uttered knowingly. Khamenei’s reference was a not-so-veiled response to a March 23 tweet by the media team of Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Hours after Khamenei’s speech, and a week after the original tweet, the Twitter account issued a correction, claiming that the original tweet had only contained part of Rafsanjani’s comments. According to the revised tweet, Rafsanjani had originally said, “The world of tomorrow is the world of the discourse of the Islamic Revolution, not intercontinental ballistic missiles and atomic weapons.”

Despite the hasty correction by Rafsanjani’s office, Iranian figures opposed to Rafsanjani’s gesture of compromise toward the United States and other Western countries took the opportunity to attack the aging statesmen and draw a hard line on Iranian missiles.

Without identifying Rafsanjani, Javad Karimi-Ghodousi, a member of parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, said March 31, “The individual who expressed this and said that the country does not need a missile industry is not simple, just recently arrived on the scene or unaware of the regional or world equations, and is completely aware of the threats against the Islamic Republic by the arrogant powers.”