ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Tensions within the Islamic Republic’s ruling elite are boiling over in the absence of former Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei (1939 - 2026), with rival factions accusing one another through their media outlets of capitulating to US demands, as Washington refuses to lift a crippling naval blockade that has reduced Iran’s oil exports to just over half a million barrels per day, according to energy data analytics firms.
The political infighting has come to the fore amid disagreements over how to negotiate with the US administration led by President Donald Trump following the six-week Iran war, which saw Washington and Tel Aviv strike thousands of targets across the country. The campaign included an airstrike that killed Iran’s supreme leader, Khamenei, the regime’s ultimate power broker, on the first day of hostilities on February 28.
The US and Iran agreed to a Pakistan-mediated ceasefire on April 8, halting fighting to allow space for negotiations. While the first round of talks concluded without a final agreement on April 11, Islamabad has since stepped up efforts to facilitate a second round, but these attempts have yet to produce tangible results, with the two sides still short of a permanent agreement to end hostilities.
The key sticking points center on Iran’s enrichment capabilities, war reparations, and Tehran’s support for armed groups aligned with the ‘Axis of Resistance’ it leads - particularly the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon - as well as the range of its ballistic missile program and the management of the Strait of Hormuz.
In Tehran, the talks with the US have split the political establishment into two camps: one that views accepting Washington’s demands as total capitulation, arguing there is no point in further negotiations because the US ultimately seeks regime change; while the other maintains that diplomacy must be pursued, warning that renewed war would bring even more disastrous consequences for the country.
The faction opposing negotiations and advocating resistance is the Front of Islamic Revolution Stability, also known as the Paydari Front, an ultraconservative group established in 2011. It argues that any concession to the US will invite further aggression from Washington. Saeed Jalili, a diplomat and politician known for his uncompromising stance as Iran’s former lead nuclear negotiator, is widely seen as the intellectual and ideological cornerstone of this camp.
Whereas the other camp is led by Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, backed by Tehran’s influential Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and appears to favor a more unified approach that supports pursuing dignified negotiations with the United States - provided Iran’s core demands are respected.
The rivalry between Ghalibaf and Jalili dates back to 2013, when they split the conservative vote by refusing to unite behind a single presidential candidate. In 2021, Jalili stepped aside to back the late Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi (1960 - 2024), but tensions between their camps persisted. After Raisi’s death, both ran again in 2024, with Jalili refusing to withdraw in favor of Ghalibaf. He reached the runoff but lost to Masoud Pezeshkian - a defeat many Ghalibaf supporters attribute to his limited appeal among centrist voters.
The power struggle resurfaced recently when Ghalibaf sought to use his position as a key power broker to advance a “unified proposal” and explore limited concessions, including a maritime settlement mechanism in the Strait of Hormuz. However, he has faced sustained internal resistance, particularly from the Paydari Front, which views any nuclear talks or compromise as “sedition” and a betrayal of the late supreme leader Khamenei’s red lines.
Mohammad Ali Naghd Ali, an ultraconservative lawmaker from Isfahan close to Jalili and a staunch supporter of the Paydari Front, recently said, “We will bring their houses down upon their heads because they are attempting to set the humiliating table of negotiations,” referring to the Iranian parliament speaker’s talks with US negotiators.
Amid the rifts, US President Trump said on Tuesday that “Iran has just informed us that they are in a ‘state of collapse’,” and that they are trying “to figure out their leadership situation (which I believe they will be able to do!).”
Two days earlier, he said that “Iran is having a very hard time figuring out who their leader is,” pointing to what he described as intense infighting between “hardliners,” who he claimed were “losing badly on the battlefield,” and “moderates,” whom he said “are not very moderate at all.”
Media war
The tensions between Ghalibad and Jalili’s camps have also spilled into a media war between their affiliated outlets. The dispute escalated to the point where the building housing Tasnim News Agency, an outlet affiliated with the IRGC and seen as supportive of the Iranian parliament speaker, was defaced on Tuesday by elements reportedly linked to the Paydari Front.
Ahead of the attack, Tasnim and Mashregh News, affiliated with Iranian intelligence, had been criticizing the escalating rhetoric of outlets strongly opposed to talks with the US, urging unity within the “family” of revolutionary media.
Among the censured outlets is Raja News, the Paydari Front’s media platform, whose editor-in-chief, Maysam Nili, is a close associate of Jalili and the brother-in-law of the late Iranian president Raisi, who was killed in a suspicious helicopter crash in May 2024.
Raja News fired back at Tasnim, saying the outlet’s position amounted to “softening the [late supreme] leader’s [Khamenei’s] red lines,” which it argued could pave the way for another version of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 nuclear deal from which the US withdrew in 2018.
Tasnim News Agency clapped back, describing the Paydari Front as a “suspicious current” in Iranian politics, further escalating the dispute between the two sides.
Meanwhile, other conservative newspapers, including Ettelaat, Quds, and Jomhouri-e Eslami, have published editorials calling for unity and backing Tasnim.
Quds, an ultraconservative newspaper, warned the bickering outlets against “fruitless arguments, especially at a time when the country needs more than anything to preserve sacred unity across various spheres.”
“The truth is that we are all concerned about the complex conditions ahead, the future of war and peace, and the circumstances surrounding them,” it wrote. “However, this does not justify inaction; rather, any opening that could serve the national interest deserves attention.”
In the Iranian legislature, 261 lawmakers issued a statement on Sunday expressing support for Ghalibaf and his negotiating team. The names of at least seven Paydari Front parliamentarians were notably absent from the document.
Amir Hossein Sabeti, a prominent ultraconservative lawmaker and leading voice of the Paydari Front, whose name was among those absent, later reaffirmed his opposition to the negotiations, stating that even if Iran dilutes its 400-kilogram stock of 60-percent enriched uranium - a key sticking point in US-Iran talks - or transfers it to Washington, “the threat [of war] will always remain over us.”
Importantly, these internal differences come at a time when Washington reportedly initiated a maritime blockade on Iranian ports on April 13, aimed at pressuring Iran’s economy, with US Central Command stating on Monday that “American forces have directed 38 ships to turn around, or return to port” since then.
Amid media reports that the US president has recently instructed aides to prepare for an “extended blockade of Iran” designed to drain its coffers and compel nuclear concessions, Iranian authorities are likely to face fateful decisions in the coming days that could further intensify friction between the competing political camps.