When President Donald Trump extended the ceasefire to give Tehran time to come up with a “unity” plan, he described it as a “deep rift.” The White House argued that Iran’s failure to show up in Pakistan for a second round of talks with Vice President J.D. Vance showed how disjointed the leadership had become.
Iranian observers see things differently. Iran insists the United States must lift the blockade on Iranian ports before talks can resume, and many analysts say the leadership is more cohesive than is perceived.
“I think this is a serious misunderstanding by the Iranian leadership,” Merat Kamrava, a government professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, told CNN’s Becky Anderson. “The leadership was very cohesive, and you saw that in the conduct of the war and negotiations.”
Governing Iran has become much more complex since the United States and Israel removed most of the regime’s military and political leaders, including Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. A group of officials who once competed across the political spectrum of the Islamic Republic are now trying to decide the country’s future under the threat of an existential war and in the conspicuous absence of the ultimate decision-maker, Mojtaba Khamenei, who succeeded his late father as the new supreme leader.
These officials also have to balance their vision for Iran’s future with domestic pressure from hardliners who refuse to declare defeat and external pressure from President Trump to declare victory.
But despite their political differences, experts say this group of senior officials appears determined to publicly project unity, even if they disagree on how to navigate the war with the United States.
Trita Parsi, deputy director of the Quincy Institute for Responsible State Strategy, told CNN that “the various factions of Iran’s leadership are more aligned now than they were before the war.” “Because this is a much smaller circle…This circle is more united in terms of strategies to use in war compared to the previous restrictions under Ali Khamenei.”
Amid speculation over whether Iran will participate in this week’s talks, the Iranian government maintained a consistent public position that negotiators would not participate. The paper accused the United States of violating the ceasefire and lacking “seriousness in pursuing a diplomatic solution.”
Even before the war, Ali Khamenei’s Islamic Republic maintained a clear list of red lines, including the right to enrich uranium, continued missile development, and support for proxy groups, and it has carried those demands into negotiations with the current Trump administration.
Iran’s political leadership has struggled to dispel reports of infighting and come up with a unified approach to the country’s military goals and negotiation strategy.
Mehdi Tabatabai, Deputy Spokesperson for the Iranian President, wrote in the X newspaper on Wednesday that “talk of division among senior officials is a well-worn political and propaganda ploy by Iran’s hostile forces.” “The unity and agreement between the battlefield, the people and the diplomats at this time is unusual and remarkable.”
The administration has elevated an official to represent that unity. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a former Revolutionary Guards commander and longtime speaker of the country’s parliament, led the initial negotiations with the United States in Islamabad and is now considered one of the key figures representing the Islamic Republic.
But even as Ghalibaf arrived in Islamabad for the first round of talks, he was accompanied by an unprecedented team of Iranian officials representing a wide range of political positions, in what appeared to be a deliberate attempt to show unity.
“Is there a difference? Of course there is,” Parsi said. But he said it is “out of touch with reality” to attribute the two countries’ inability to reach an agreement not to President Trump’s contradictory messages, but rather to fragmented leadership in Iran.
Over the weekend, the United States and Iran appeared close to a deal to end the seven-week war, CNN reported. President Trump then began posting about the ongoing talks on social media and spoke to several reporters by phone on Friday morning, as Pakistani mediators gave updates on ongoing talks with Iranian officials in Tehran.
Some Trump administration officials privately acknowledged to CNN that the president’s public comments were having a negative impact on the negotiations, pointing out the delicate nature of the negotiations and the Iranian people’s deep distrust of the United States.
Faced with the threat of annihilation, the Iranian regime dismantled the traditional system of rival power centers that had been competing for almost 50 years. Instead, the new wartime regime aims to unite negotiators and political managers under a single military umbrella and pull the Islamic Republic out of crisis without admitting defeat.
In the streets, large crowds representing the country’s hardliners rally daily to support the regime and oppose the deal with the United States that leaves Iran in a losing position.
These hard-line views dominate Congress and state media, and any appearance of Iranian officials willing to accept President Trump’s declaration of victory has drawn fierce criticism. When Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi pointed out last week that the Strait of Hormuz had been opened to commercial shipping, he came under fire from regime hardliners and forced other officials to provide swift clarification.
This wartime structure is vastly different from the way the Islamic Republic was ruled for 37 years under Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
His son Mojtaba was appointed the country’s leader but remains in hiding. Reports say he is injured or severely incapacitated, raising uncertainty about whether he is giving clear instructions to his subordinates or simply letting them guess what he wants without specific instructions.
Hamidreza Azizi, a visiting researcher at the German Institute for International Security Affairs, said: “Currently, the system operates in a different way. Previously… there was a body that discussed strategic issues and presented a letter of advice to the supreme leader to take a final decision.”
“Meetings with the supreme leader cannot be as regular as they should be,” he said. “That automatically means that other officials have more room for maneuver in deciding what steps to take regarding war and peace.”
