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As hopes for talks with the United States flicker and fade, Iran’s chronic factional infighting once again appears to have torpedoed a diplomatic opening—even before it properly began.
With negotiations now hanging in the balance, conflicting signals from Tehran have reinforced a familiar pattern: internal rivalries routinely overwhelm coherence at moments requiring discipline.
On Wednesday, Axios reported that the planned talks were no longer expected to go ahead, while Israel’s Channel 12 went further, citing officials as saying the process had been cancelled altogether.
Iranian and US officials have not publicly confirmed that account, but the drift has been unmistakable.
The unraveling followed days of public discord inside Iran’s political establishment.
After President Masoud Pezeshkian said he had “ordered” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to travel to Turkey to discuss arrangements for talks, ultraconservative MP Amir Hossein Sabeti attacked the move in a post on X.
“Mr. Araghchi, our people are waiting for a pre-emptive action against the enemy, not negotiations. And you got up and went to Turkey?!”
The remarks ignored—or deliberately blurred—the fact that decisions on negotiations with the United States rest with the Supreme Leader, not the president. They also illustrated how calls for escalation are often deployed less as strategy than as factional positioning, regardless of the risks such rhetoric may invite.
A second episode followed when ultraconservative MP Hamid Rasai targeted Vice President Jafar Ghaempanah over an X post responding to Pezeshkian’s message about Araghchi’s trip.
After Ghaempanah wrote, “No war is good, and no peace necessarily means surrender,” Rasai questioned his loyalty and invoked his U.S.-based son, escalating the attack with religious language.
Such exchanges are not aberrations. Factional conflict has been embedded in the Islamic Republic since its inception.
Early struggles between Islamic liberals and religious fundamentalists gave way to rivalries among clerical factions, later morphing into competition between reformists and conservatives, and, since the mid-2000s, a sharper divide between hardliners and moderates.
For years, the Supreme Leader functioned as a broker among these camps, preserving a degree of political coherence. As power has become more centralized and alignments more rigid, that balancing role has weakened.
Vested interests across the system have repeatedly shown a willingness to obstruct—and at times actively sabotage—diplomatic processes rather than allow rivals to claim credit for engagement with Washington.
As many commentators, including former President Hassan Rouhani, have long observed, the fiercest resistance to talks has often come not from principled opposition to diplomacy itself, but from fear of who might benefit politically if diplomacy succeeds.
The result is a recurring pattern in which negotiations collapse not only under external pressure, but under the weight of Iran’s own internal rivalries.
Israel’s N12 News reports citing two senior US officials that nuclear talks between Iran and the United States scheduled for Friday have been canceled after Tehran backed away from previously reached understandings.
"The Iranians tried to move the talks from Turkey to Oman and to exclude other countries from them. We said no. We tried to reach a compromise, but the Iranians refused. There is a good chance that the talks will not take place at all this week," the report quoted one senior US officials as saying.
“We are not naive about the Iranians. If there is a real conversation — we will hold it, but we will not waste our time,” the report quoted another senior US official as saying.
Internet connectivity in Iran remains restricted four weeks after disruptions began, despite traffic returning to pre-shutdown levels in recent days, network monitoring firm Cloudflare Radar said on Wednesday.
Cloudflare Radar said general internet access in Iran continues to be filtered and limited through allowlists, indicating that broader connectivity has not been fully restored.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio doubled down on Washington’s demand that any talks with Iran extend well beyond its nuclear program, while expressing doubt that negotiations would ultimately succeed.
“I think in order for talks to actually lead to something meaningful, they will have to include certain things,” Rubio said, listing Iran’s ballistic missile program, its support for armed groups across the region and its treatment of its own citizens, alongside the nuclear issue.
“I’m not sure you can reach a deal with these guys,” he added. “But we’re going to try to find out.”
That position has been widely criticized by Iranian opposition figures and activists, who say engaging Tehran so soon after a deadly nationwide crackdown risks normalizing mass violence.
More than 36,000 protesters were killed during the January crackdown, according to Iran International’s Editorial Board, with many more detained and facing harsh punishment, including lengthy prison sentences and possible executions.
Rubio appeared to respond to that criticism by emphasizing what he described as President Donald Trump’s willingness to engage diplomatically without conferring legitimacy.
“President Trump is willing to talk to and meet with and engage with anyone in the world,” Rubio said. “We don’t view meetings as even a little legitimization.”
The talks are expected to begin on Friday, but confusion continues to surround their scope, format and even location.
Rubio said US officials believed a forum in Turkey had been agreed upon, only to see Iranian statements disputing that account. “That’s still being worked through,” he said.
An Iranian official quoted by Reuters on Wednesday appeared to suggest that a shift in venue to Oman had been confirmed.
The official also contradicted Washington’s position on the scope of talks, insisting they would be limited strictly to Iran’s nuclear program and exclude its missile capabilities.
President Trump said earlier this week that “bad things will probably happen” if no deal is reached.
Negotiations between Iran and the United States set for Friday will begin indirectly and shift to direct talks after Tehran receives a US guarantee to adhere to whatever is agreed, Hezbollah-affiliated Al Mayadeen said, citing an unnamed source in Tehran.
The source added that Iran wants to resume negotiations from where they left off before the 12-day war in June.
The report said the talks will be exclusively focused on the nuclear issue and that Tehran has requested that a large number of countries not attend.
