As the world watches the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, a sense of chaos has been inescapable. But there’s something different about the confusion surrounding negotiations between U.S. and Iranian officials in Pakistan. This time, contradictions and inconsistencies are not coming only from President Donald Trump. Now, what we are seeing on the Iranian side is an internal power struggle bursting out into the open.
Sure, Trump has played a major role in muddling the situation. He has oscillated between declaring victory and threatening doom, frustrating his advisors who plead with him to stop posting and speaking relentlessly to the media. In one session with reporters on Friday, he gave three different answers to the question of whether he would extend the ceasefire. On Sunday, he first announced that Vice President JD Vance would not participate in the talks. Then he said Vance was already mid-air, flying to Islamabad, before someone spotted Vance in Washington.
Contradictory and counter-productive statements by the president are one reason for the confusion. But the latest obstacle to a solution is that Iran is gripped by a factional battle over who will control the country. The immediate corollary from that struggle is that the U.S. may be negotiating with people who will ultimately have no power to carry out any agreement.
The internal clashes became visible on Friday, when Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announced on X that, “the passage of all commercial vessels through the Straight of Hormuz is declared completely open for the remaining period of ceasefire.”
Trump promptly boasted of his great victory, claiming that Iran had “agreed to everything” and would work with the U.S. to remove its highly enriched uranium.
By then, Araghchi had come under public assault by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. IRGC-linked broadcasters were denigrating him over the airwaves, and the Tasnim news agency criticized Araghchi for what it called “complete poor judgement in communication.”
Before long, the IRGC had reversed the foreign minister’s announcement, informing ship captains that:
“Iran declares the Strait of Hormuz completely closed…No vessel of any type or nationality is allowed to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.”
In case there was any ambiguity, Iranian gunboats fired on two merchant ships trying to cross Hormuz the next day. And the day after that, the US fired on and seized an Iranian tanker that was breaking its blockade. What had looked like major progress on stopping the war suddenly morphed into a sharp escalation.
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As noted, the problem stems from two directions. Trump’s chest-thumping boasts, claims that Iran has surrendered, produce predictable blowback. But Iran’s factions are battling it out, and the contours of that conflict are increasingly visible.
On one side are the diplomats and pragmatic politicians -- let’s dispense with the notion of any so-called “moderates” -- including Foreign Minister Araghchi, the lead Iranian negotiator, Parliamentary Speaker Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf, and President Masoud Pezeshkian. On the other side are the IRGC and the most radical elements of the regime, including the ones who view this war as a possible prelude to the return of the 12th Imam, the Mahdi, akin to the Shiites’ Messiah.
Trump likes to declare that he has achieved “Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail.” That, of course, is Totally False. Total Wishful Thinking.
What has occurred is regime alteration, and not a good one.
Sometimes, killing a bad guy leads to a less bad, or less talented replacement, as in the successor to former Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani. But in this war, the assassinations of top leaders have so far brought even more uncompromising and radicalized figures.
The severely wounded son of the former supreme leader, newly named supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei, may or may not be calling all the shots. But people close to him have taken key positions. Many of them hail from the so-called Habib Circle, made up of former members of the Habib Battalion of the IRGC during the Iran-Iraq war. The Habib Circle has been tagged in Congress as an “informal security-intelligence network, which has committed human rights violations and is involved in terrorist activities.”
After the assassination of security chief Ali Larijani early in the war, the post went to Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, a former IRGC commander who boasted in his memoirs of committing assassinations. He was so violent and radical that a younger Soleimani briefly quit the Quds force in protest against him. The late Larijani was no Jeffersonian moderate. He coordinated the crushing response of the January protests, with the killing of tens of thousands of protesters, but he was said to have a pragmatic streak.
Then there’s the new IRGC commander, Ahmad Vahidi, a man with an outstanding Interpol arrest warrant for his role in the 1994 terrorist attack in Buenos Aires, more than 8,000 miles away, that blew up the Jewish community center leaving 85 dead and hundreds wounded. Vahidi was also the leader of the force that murdered Mahsa Amini in 2022 after she was arrested for improperly wearing her head cover. That was the killing that sparked the Woman, Life, Freedom protests, also crushed by massacring thousands of protesters, many of them young women.
These exceedingly radical figures are engaged in a contest for power with the civilian-led diplomats, who can speak in less fiery tones and appear more willing to find a compromise; people who Trump hopes will negotiate an agreement that will not only end the war but ensure that Iran will not in the future have a nuclear weapon nor disrupt navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. But how much power do these men have? (Obviously, they are all men.)
The killing of supreme leader Ali Khamenei created a vacuum that his son has not fully filled. The late ayatollah would mediate between competing factions and determine the formal position of the regime. But now, the competing elements are jostling for control.
The hardliners appear to be doing their best to sabotage the talks, as if Trump weren’t doing a good enough job of it himself.
Which side is stronger, the more pragmatic politicians and diplomats, or the inflexible messianic ultra-hardliners? The people with the weapons, the people who control the missiles and the drones; the people who have the ability to close the Strait of Hormuz after the foreign minister announces it is open.
Eventually, when the war ends and Iran emerges to a badly damaged economy, the regime may face intense pressure for change. But, for now, in the midst of the chaos, all the evidence indicates that the hardest of hardliners are taking the reins, outmaneuvering the pragmatists, and cracking down hard on any dissent from the majority of Iranians who wish this regime would, at long last, leave the scene.
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