On Saturday, the Supreme Leader drew international attention when, addressing graduating Army cadets, he issued a double-edged message on President Rouhani’s five-day visit to New York and the United Nations last week.

On the one hand, Ayatollah Khamenei said, “We support the government’s diplomatic movements and place importance on diplomatic efforts, and support what was in this last trip.”

On the other, he left this vague but notable caution, “Of course, in our opinion some of what occurred in the New York trip was not fitting.”

The Supreme Leader did not explain what was “not fitting” — speculation centred on the historic phone call between Barack Obama and Rouhani as the Iranian President was leaving New York — but invoked his well-known dislike of Washington, The US Government is untrustworthy, self-important, and a promise-breaker.”

He added the stinging remark, “The US Government is a government captured by the Zionist international network and has to appease the occupying regime.”

So is Khamenei rejecting engagement and nuclear talks including the Americans, less than two weeks after Rouhani launched his high-profile effort — one that had been endorsed by the Supreme Leader’s call for “heroic flexibility”?

Not quite.

The starting point for Saturday is the setting, with the Supreme Leader surrounded by Iran’s military leaders as he spoke.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps have been Rouhani’s tallest foe in the engagement effort. Ever since the President’s election in June, they have tried to curb his authority, sniping at him through media outlets and declaring the Islamic Republic’s dedicated struggle against the American enemy.

The IRGC was pushed into nominal, public support of the President’s speech at the United Nations by Khamenei’s anointment of the mission. However, the head of the Guards, Mohammad Ali Jafari, still sniped that the call with Obama was a “tactical error”.

Jafari added, “If we see errors being made by officials, the revolutionary forces will issue the necessary warnings.”

The Supreme Leader faces having to broker that dispute. And he also had to deal with the aftermath of the Rouhani trip, with Obama having to give reassuring words to a visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — just before Netanyahu gave his expected full-throated denunciation of the Islamic Republic in his UN speech, with the promise that Israel would use military action if necessary.

Out of personal belief or tactical maneuvring — and probably both — the Supreme Leader was not going to let this pass. Thus the explicit reference to an Obama Administration controlled by the “Zionist international network” and the allusion to something that was “not fitting” about Rouhani’s trip.

Add one more possible motive for Khamenei: he may have been unsettled at the portrayal of the Obama-Rouhani call as the first direct contact between US and Iranian leaders in 34 years — given that he, not Rouhani, is supposed to be the Supreme Leader.

Obama appeared to recognize this in comments to the Associated Press this weekend: “The way the Iranian system works, Rouhani’s not the only decision maker — he’s not even the ultimate decision maker.”

So adding this up, has the Supreme Leader renounced engagement?

No.

Khamenei’s most important line on Saturday remains, “We support the government’s diplomatic movements and place importance on diplomatic efforts.”

Despite the opposition of the Guards and despite his dislike of the US Government, the Supreme Leader is committed to at least the opening stage of the resumed nuclear talks — the meeting between Iran and the 5+1 Powers on October 15-16 in Geneva.

However, as we evaluated ever since Khamenei’s “heroic flexibility” statement, Rouhani has to show some positive outcome from that meeting — a move by the US towards recognition of Iran’s right to enrich uranium and a move to the lifting of sanctions. And he has to be able to present it as a sign of Iranian strength, rather than a knuckling-under to American pressure.

The diplomatic and political scenario, despite Saturday’s headlines, is unchanged.