Unity or fracture? Tehran battles Trump’s narrative of disarray
Assertions by US President Donald Trump that Iran’s leadership is divided, and Tehran’s increasingly coordinated effort to deny it, have thrust the issue of unity to the center of the standoff between the two countries.
Trump has repeatedly cast Iran’s leadership as fractured and disorganized. In one post, he wrote: “Iran is having a very hard time figuring out who their leader is! They just don’t know!”
As speculation spread, President Masoud Masoud Pezeshkian sought to set the tone in a social media post declaring: “In Iran there are no ‘hardliners’ or ‘moderates.’ We are all Iranians and revolutionaries.”
The message was reposted verbatim by senior officials across the political and military establishment, including judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, underscoring the coordinated nature of the response.
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Assertions by US President Donald Trump that Iran’s leadership is divided, and Tehran’s increasingly coordinated effort to deny it, have thrust the issue of unity to the center of the standoff between the two countries.
Trump has repeatedly cast Iran’s leadership as fractured and disorganized. In one post, he wrote: “Iran is having a very hard time figuring out who their leader is! They just don’t know!” describing “infighting” between “‘Hardliners,’ who have been losing BADLY on the battlefield, and the ‘Moderates,’ who are not very moderate at all.”
In a separate interview, he said: “They’re all messed up. They have no idea who their leader is… we took out, really, three levels of leaders.”
As speculation spread, President Masoud Masoud Pezeshkian sought to set the tone in a social media post declaring: “In Iran there are no ‘hardliners’ or ‘moderates.’ We are all Iranians and revolutionaries.”
The message was reposted verbatim by senior officials across the political and military establishment, including judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, Vice President Mohammad-Reza Aref, senior advisers, and the Supreme National Security Council, underscoring the coordinated nature of the response.
Mohseni-Ejei went further in a separate post, directly attacking Trump and calling the labels “hardliner” and “moderate” “fabricated and hollow terms” borrowed from Western political literature.
The messaging blitz from Tehran followed the collapse of negotiations in Islamabad and reports that parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf—who led Tehran’s delegation there—may have stepped down from the negotiating team, fueling speculation over internal disagreements about talks with Washington.
Reports first circulated by Israel’s Channel 12 claimed Ghalibaf resigned following interference by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Other reports suggested he was reprimanded for trying to include Iran’s nuclear program in discussions with the United States.
Hardline lawmaker Mahmoud Nabavian appeared to confirm tensions in a leaked audio recording, saying the team had discussed the nuclear issue “against the Supreme Leader’s position” and calling it a “strategic error.”
Saeed Saeed Jalili, widely rumored to be a possible replacement for Ghalibaf, struck a similar note while avoiding the exact phrasing, emphasizing “the unity of all segments of the nation” under the Supreme Leader.
The Supreme Leader’s official account also weighed in, warning that enemy “media operations” were aimed at undermining national unity and security.
Some analysts see Trump’s comments as deliberate pressure. Reformist journalist Ahmad Zeidabadi argued Trump was trying to “create division and conflict within the structure of the government” to present any eventual deal as “his complete victory.”
Ali Afshari, a US-based political analyst, described the remarks as “psychological warfare aimed at disrupting the cohesion of the opposing side.”
Yet even as officials insist on unity, conflicting signals from Tehran have deepened public uncertainty over negotiations and the future of the war.
Hardline lawmaker Ali Khezrian said the resumption of war was “inevitable” and claimed Iran had halted all communication with Washington.
Despite publicly dismissing reports of Ghalibaf’s resignation, parliament communications chief Iman Shamsaei said no new round of negotiations had been scheduled.
Journalist Saeed Agenji, meanwhile, insisted Ghalibaf still held “the helm of negotiations and domestic management of the country.”
Zeidabadi warned that mixed messaging over negotiations, ceasefire, agreement and even the ultimate goals of the war had left ordinary Iranians confused, risking reinforcing exactly the perception of disarray Tehran is trying to deny.
The real story behind Tehran’s sudden “unity” campaign did not begin with Donald Trump’s accusations of disarray within Iran’s leadership. It began with a secret letter to Mojtaba Khamenei.
In recent days, word has circulated in Iranian political circles about a highly confidential letter reportedly written by a group of senior officials to Mojtaba Khamenei.
According to those familiar with the matter, the letter warned that Iran’s economic situation is grave, that the country cannot continue on its current path, and that the leadership has no practical choice but to negotiate seriously with the United States over the nuclear file.
The historical echo is hard to miss. In the final days of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988, senior Iranian officials and commanders warned Ruhollah Khomeini that the war could no longer be sustained.
The real story behind Tehran’s sudden “unity” campaign did not begin with Donald Trump’s accusations of disarray within Iran’s leadership. It began with a secret letter to Mojtaba Khamenei.
In recent days, word has circulated in Iranian political circles about a highly confidential letter reportedly written by a group of senior officials to Mojtaba Khamenei.
According to those familiar with the matter, the letter warned that Iran’s economic situation is grave, that the country cannot continue on its current path, and that the leadership has no practical choice but to negotiate seriously with the United States over the nuclear file.
The historical echo is hard to miss. In the final days of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988, senior Iranian officials and commanders warned Ruhollah Khomeini that the war could no longer be sustained.
Only days earlier, Khomeini had still been insisting on continuing the war. But under the weight of those warnings, he accepted UN Security Council Resolution 598 and ended the conflict, a decision he famously likened to drinking from a poisoned chalice.
That is why the current letter matters: it suggests that some senior figures now see the nuclear standoff as another moment when ideological insistence is colliding with the limits of the state.
The reported signatories included senior figures such as Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Masoud Pezeshkian, Abbas Araghchi, Mostafa Pourmohammadi, and others. Some officials apparently refused to sign it. One name now circulating is Ali Bagheri Kani, Iran’s former chief nuclear negotiator under Ebrahim Raisi.
The letter was supposed to remain top secret. It was addressed to Mojtaba Khamenei, not to the public, Parliament, or the ordinary political class. But according to accounts now circulating, Bagheri Kani showed the letter to other hardliners outside the high-level circle and emphasized that he had not signed it. From there, the matter leaked into political circles in Tehran.
Two public reactions suggest how sensitive the leak has become. The first came from Jalil Mohebbi, a figure close to Ghalibaf and a former secretary of the headquarters for Enjoining the Good and Forbidding the Evil.
In a pointed legal warning, he wrote that if a confidential letter is given to a member of a meeting, and that person shows it to outsiders while saying, “I did not sign this letter,” then under Article 3 of the law on publishing and disclosing confidential and secret government documents, that person can face up to ten years in prison.
Mohebbi added: “This offense is unforgivable.”
The second came from a Telegram channel that referred to an “important confidential letter” written by some senior officials and left unsigned by others.
The post asked why, at such a sensitive moment after the war, some officials had begun writing letters to “senior figures of the system,” and why others were so angry about its disclosure. In Iranian political language, that phrase is often used to refer to the Supreme Leader without naming him directly.
Trump’s claim meets Tehran’s denial
This was the atmosphere in which Trump’s claim landed. He said Iranian officials were “fighting like cats and dogs” because they could not agree about negotiations with the United States. Tehran immediately claimed otherwise. On Thursday, senior officials moved in near-unison to insist there was no split.
Ghalibaf, the speaker of parliament, wrote: “In Iran there are no hardliners or moderates. We are all Iranian and revolutionary.” He added that with the “iron unity of the nation and the state” and full obedience to the Supreme Leader, Iran would make the “criminal aggressor” regret its actions.
President Pezeshkian posted almost the same message: “In Iran, there are no ‘hardliners’ or ‘moderates.’ We are all Iranians and revolutionaries.” He too invoked unity between nation and state, obedience to the Leader, and victory for Iran.
Mohseni Ejei, the head of the Judiciary, went further. He said the “foolish president of America” should know that “hardliner” and “moderate” are absurd and baseless terms from Western political literature. In Islamic Iran, he said, all groups and factions ultimately stand united under the orders of the Supreme Leader.
Mojtaba’s red line
Before the first round of negotiations, Mojtaba Khamenei had reportedly drawn a red line: Iranian officials were not to discuss the nuclear issue with the United States. But the Iranian delegation had to talk about the nuclear file, because any serious negotiation with Washington necessarily revolves around it. So they did.
That decision triggered the hardline backlash.
Mahmoud Nabavian, deputy chairman of Parliament’s National Security Commission, was present in the Pakistan negotiations. He has since said that the outcome of those talks was not satisfactory and that the negotiating team made a “strategic mistake.” His accusation was specific: the team acted “contrary to the explicit red line of the Leader of the Revolution” by discussing the nuclear issue with America.
Nabavian also said the delegation should have discussed the ten points set out by the Supreme Leader, not the nuclear file. He criticized the idea that the “Resistance Front” could be reduced only to Lebanon, saying Gaza, Yemen, and Iraq are also part of it.
Most importantly, he said that based on new information he had received, from now on, “even if the naval blockade is lifted, any negotiation with America is forbidden.”
Amir Hossein Sabeti, a hardline MP, made the same charge more directly. “I am saying this for the first time, and I stand by what I say,” he said. “If what I say is false, the officials should take action against me.” He added that one of the Leader’s red lines was that “in the negotiations, the nuclear issue must absolutely not be discussed.”
Then he challenged Ghalibaf and Araghchi by name: if they did not negotiate over the nuclear issue, they should explicitly deny it. If it becomes clear that they did, he warned, “we will frankly speak out to the people of Iran in a different way.”
The backlash moves into the open
This helps explain why the Iranian delegation did not travel to Pakistan for the second round. The dispute was no longer merely about diplomatic tactics. It had become a fight over whether senior officials had crossed a red line set by Mojtaba Khamenei.
The backlash then moved into the media. Nour News, affiliated with Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, published a video warning that a “dangerous current” was trying to portray Ghalibaf and Araghchi as figures who, instead of following the line of resistance, were seeking “surrender and compromise.” Nour News said this current was trying to place them against the Leader and other senior pillars of the system.
That formulation is revealing. Ghalibaf and Araghchi were not only answering Trump. They were under pressure from within the regime, where hardliners accused them of abandoning the resistance, pushing compromise, and trying to pressure the Leader.
The secret letter appears to be the center of this crisis. One camp believes Iran’s economic situation has become so severe that the country must negotiate over the nuclear issue and try to reach a deal. Another camp believes that even discussing the nuclear file with America violates Mojtaba Khamenei’s order and amounts to surrender.
The unity tweets as damage control
That is why Thursday’s tweets sounded so coordinated. They were not just patriotic slogans. They were loyalty statements. Ghalibaf, Pezeshkian, Mohseni Ejei, and others were signaling that they stood with the Leader, not against him, and that the leaked letter should not be read as an act of rebellion.
So when Tehran says there is no division, the evidence points the other way.
There was a secret letter to the leader. Some officials signed it; others refused. The letter leaked. A figure close to Ghalibaf threatened legal consequences for the disclosure. Hardline MPs accused the negotiating team of violating the Leader’s red line. Nour News warned that Ghalibaf and Araghchi were being portrayed as men of “surrender and compromise.” Then, suddenly, senior officials issued synchronized tweets declaring unity and obedience.
Trump said Iranian officials were “fighting like cats and dogs” over negotiations with the United States. Tehran rejected the claim, but the sequence of events points to a real internal fight. The dispute is not cosmetic. It goes to the core of the regime’s strategy: whether Iran can survive its economic crisis without a nuclear deal, and whether pursuing such a deal now means defying Mojtaba Khamenei.
The unity tweets were not proof that Tehran is united. They were the public cover for a split that had already become visible.
As debate over a ceasefire and renewed talks with the United States intensifies, the absence of a clear supreme arbiter in Tehran appears to be giving Iran’s hardliners more room to shape the narrative and to hinder any eventual agreement.
Under former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, ultraconservative factions were often allowed to rage in public, attack moderates and mobilize supporters in the streets. But when necessary, he could impose discipline.
Even on the 2015 nuclear deal, which he later criticized publicly, the system moved quickly once it was understood he had given at least tacit approval.
Then-speaker Ali Larijani famously pushed the JCPOA through parliament in a matter of minutes, effectively silencing opposition by invoking the Supreme Leader’s authority.
Today, who truly leads Iran—whether one man or a shifting collective—is anyone’s guess. What is clearer is that the political vacuum appears to be rewarding the loudest and most uncompromising voices.
Iranian hardliners’ arguments for continuing the war with the United States have come to dominate state television, media reports and billboards across major squares in Tehran.
Many frame negotiations as a betrayal of “red lines,” accusing “accomplices of America and Israel,” “liberals” and those intimidated by Washington of undermining the country.
Those so-called red lines are often justified through selective interpretations of new leader Mojtaba Khamenei’s April 9 message, former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s past speeches rejecting negotiations and claims by individual hardliners citing unnamed “reliable sources.”
One prominent example is ultraconservative MP Amir Hossein Sabeti of the Paydari Party, who has repeatedly warned that negotiators may be crossing the Supreme Leader’s red lines.
In a post on X, he claimed to have “the most definite information” that negotiating with the United States on the nuclear issue was prohibited and demanded that Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi publicly deny reports of talks on suspending enrichment or diluting uranium.
He implied consequences if they did not.
State television has amplified such voices while giving nightly exposure to rallies calling for the war to continue until “final victory.”
The constant need to fill airtime has also elevated more extreme or theatrical voices, including members of the public eager for their moment on air.
Meanwhile, moderate voices arguing for negotiations appear to have lost even the limited channels they once had to plead their case to the country’s highest authority.
Iranian academic Sadeq Zibakalam, speaking to the reform-leaning Fararu website, questioned why some factions remain so insistent on continuing the war despite the economic devastation already inflicted.
“Do these gentlemen know what forty days of war has done to our economy, how many production units have run into trouble, and how many have laid off their workers?” he asked.
He said it was striking that hardline revolutionaries inside Iran, opposition groups seeking regime change and Israeli officials all appeared to share an interest in prolonging the conflict.
Views such as Zibakalam’s were once represented within inner circles of power by figures like former president Hassan Rouhani, who had direct access to Ali Khamenei, even if he rarely got his way.
President Masoud Pezeshkian has no such standing as the veteran Rouhani. And whatever limited influence he might have enjoyed under Khamenei Sr. appears to have diminished further under Khamenei Jr., who—even if in good health—remains almost certainly beyond the reach of civilian leaders.
In the absence of a clear authority to impose discipline or bless compromise, political competition in Tehran increasingly appears to favor the fiercest factions.
Iran’s state broadcaster has sparked ridicule after claiming that 87% of Iranians support continuing the war with the United States, in a curious turn from early in the conflict where pro-war sentiments of an alienated populace was branded treachery.
The controversy began following a Monday broadcast on the state television, where hardline commentator Mostafa Khoshcheshm asserted that the Iranian people overwhelmingly favor military confrontation over diplomatic efforts to end the war.
“According to polls conducted by academic centers regarding the war, 87% of the people said that once and for all, this decayed tooth should be pulled out,” he said, arguing that reopening the Strait of Hormuz could leave Iran unable to close it again if needed.
No details about such a survey—its methodology, sample size or sponsoring institution—have been published, making the claim impossible to independently verify.
Yet the figure is notable less for its credibility than for what it reveals about a shifting narrative inside Iran.
Early in the conflict, some hardline factions and state-aligned voices attacked members of the Iranian diaspora and others who openly welcomed military pressure on the Islamic Republic or argued that war might weaken the system.
At some rallies and in media commentary, those seen as supporting foreign intervention were portrayed as traitors or collaborators.
Now, some of those same domestic factions are the ones most vehemently opposing negotiations with the United States and calling for the continuation of the war.
The contradiction reflects a more complicated reality.
Many Iranians may initially have supported military escalation—not out of loyalty to the Islamic Republic, but in the belief that war could weaken or even topple the regime.
That is not the kind of support state television appears to be claiming.
Instead, hardliners and state media have pointed to crowds at nightly rallies as evidence of a “majority” favoring war, though critics argue these gatherings represent a narrow and possibly organized segment of society.
At some of these rallies, participants have described the conflict with the United States as “existential” and argued it must continue until the “victory of good over evil.”
Online, many reacted with ridicule.
“When was the last time the opinion of the people of Iran—not the presenters of IRIB—was important and influential in the country’s major decisions?” one reader wrote on the Khabar Online website.
Another user sarcastically noted: “I don't know, maybe your ‘people’ are different from our ‘people.’ Who are these 87%? 87% of government supporters? … Do you even count us as part of the statistics?”
Public skepticism has been further fueled by allegations of digital manipulation by organized “commenting forces,” often referred to as the “Cyber Army.”
Readers have pointed out that while pro-negotiation comments often initially receive the vast majority of “likes,” those numbers are sometimes reversed within hours.
One user wrote: “Unfortunately, within a few hours, the ‘Zombies’ of the cyber army change the scores.”
Whether or not 87% of Iranians support continuing the war, the backlash to the claim suggests the battle over public opinion—and over who gets to define patriotism—may be intensifying alongside the conflict itself.