As negotiations between the United States and Iran enter a critical phase, a small but influential hard-liner is stepping up efforts to thwart a potential deal with the United States and reinforcing President Donald Trump’s insistence on division within the Islamic republic.
The group shares President Trump’s view that the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers was a mistake, but for different reasons. The regime’s efforts to placate Iran have so far failed, as its position is highly hostile to the West, even by the standards of Iran’s conservative hardliners.
And as the Islamic Republic’s new leaders seek to unite in the face of the most serious existential threat the regime has faced, the ultra-hardliners are stepping up efforts to argue against the deal with the United States in the media, in Congress, and on the streets, arguing that only by defeating the United States can Iran secure a favorable deal.
Its members, known as “Jebhe-e-Paidari,” or the Endurance Front, are often described by observers as “super-revolutionaries,” who see them as guardians of the values of the 1979 revolution that overthrew the pro-Western shah before imposing an authoritarian regime rooted in Shiite Islamist ideology.
“They see resistance against the United States and Israel as an eternal battle,” Hamidreza Azizi, a visiting fellow at the German Institute for International Security Studies, told CNN. “They believe that the Shiite state must survive until the end of time, and they are very fanatical about their religious ideology.”
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