It looked, for a moment, like Iran’s ruling establishment had finally found common ground. After months of devastating war, an April cease-fire, and 70 days of indirect talks brokered by Pakistan and Qatar, Tehran and Washington signed a memorandum of understanding in mid-June ending hostilities. The entire establishment lined up behind the agreement. The foreign ministry insisted every organ of state acted “with one voice.” Hardline newspapers claimed the talks proceeded under the personal oversight of new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei. Even Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani called negotiators and soldiers “men cut from the same cloth of armed resistance.”
But the appearance of unity is deceptive. As analyst Alex Vatanka wrote in Foreign Policy, the consensus on display was only “a consensus to stop a war no one could win and on terms Tehran can present as a victory. It says almost nothing about the question the war reopened rather than resolved: how Iran should position itself to the outside world. On that, the Islamic Republic is not united at all.”
The fissure runs deep through Iran’s power structure. On one side stands what analysts call the resistance or endurance camp: the Paydari Front, the network around former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, hardline outlets like Kayhan and Tasnim, and a bloc of senior clerics who view any durable accommodation with the United States as a trap or outright surrender. Kayhan has argued that Iran’s earlier restraint yielded nothing and that attrition now favors Tehran. The editor of Tasnim declared that “no agreement with Washington would be better than a bad one,” citing the 2015 nuclear deal as proof that Americans cannot be trusted. One analyst writing in Fararu went further, advocating for Iran to pursue a nuclear weapon and predicting renewed war by fall.
On the other side is the pro-diplomacy camp, clustered around President Masoud Pezeshkian, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. Pezeshkian has emphasized the severe economic costs of continued confrontation: inflation, shortages, disrupted oil exports. Araghchi has worked to defer the hardest nuclear questions and convert coercion into managed leverage, including a prospective arrangement with Oman to manage the Strait of Hormuz. Ghalibaf, a former Revolutionary Guard commander who embodies the pragmatic conservative current, wants to end the war without normalizing relations with the United States.
The conflict between these camps is not abstract. In late May, as diplomacy reached its most delicate phase, the Paydari Front and Jalili’s network mounted a coordinated effort to strip Ghalibaf of his speakership described by observers as “round-the-clock political blackmail.” Ghalibaf survived, securing a seventh year in the post, but the timing was deliberate: a reminder that Iran’s hardliners remain loud and capable of disrupting governance from within.
The pressure on Pezeshkian has been relentless. Reformist commentators report persistent media campaigns, parliamentary obstruction, and recurring rumors designed to force his resignation. The goal is to drain the political capital of a government committed to diplomacy and economic normalization.
Even the new Supreme Leader has not been spared. In a stunning breach of protocol, a hardline parliamentary deputy posted a Quranic verse about the unworthy son of Noah under the headline “Who Is Qualified for Leadership?” It was widely read as an indirect shot at Mojtaba Khamenei’s legitimacy, coming not from a reformist or an exile but from inside the tent: a regime hardliner questioning the succession that followed his father’s death in February.
Analyst Ahmad Zeidabadi warned in mid-June that a small group of ideological hardliners appeared “willing to manufacture instability, placing their own interests above the state’s.” The warning underscores a deeper truth: Iran’s elite fragmentation is real, and it is dangerous.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps occupies an ambiguous position in this struggle. For years, the IRGC was the main institutional home of rejectionism. But the war pushed the security establishment to the center of decision-making, and now that the IRGC-security apparatus dominates the negotiating process, it cannot straightforwardly lead a revolt against the very track it is supervising. As Vatanka notes, the meaningful fault line runs through institutions, not neatly between them. The hardline pressure has come from a political-clerical bloc, not the IRGC as an institution.
Analysts have outlined three possible scenarios for Iran’s trajectory. The first is continued resilience with IRGC cohesion maintained, allowing the regime to muddle through. The second is a contained crisis in which elite fragmentation deepens but stops short of system-threatening collapse. The third, considered the least likely for now, is regime collapse. The key variable, analysts say, is whether Iran’s elites continue to believe that loyalty to the system ensures their survival.
The disagreement among Iran’s elites centers on fundamental questions: nuclear inspections, tolls on the Strait of Hormuz, reopening the waterway, commitments in Lebanon, and the trade-off between economic recovery and military resistance. Iran has already rebuilt roughly three-quarters of its prewar missile force after firing some 1,850 missiles during the war. Intelligence assessments suggest newly delivered Russian systems may be part of the rebuilt arsenal. The World Bank has already begun pricing in the global consequences of any renewed escalation.
If the United States wants the cease-fire to hold, it must take Tehran’s internal politics seriously. The pro-deal camp needs something tangible to point to: front-loaded, visible benefits that hardliners cannot easily dismiss as surrender. A deal that delivers pragmatists nothing concrete will be killed from within.