Who speaks for Iran: What the public rift means, and what it hides

Months before Ali Khamenei was killed, Masoud Pezeshkian warned of the danger that would follow if anything happened to the supreme leader. “Then we would fight among ourselves,” he said. “Israel would not even need to come.” That warning now reads less like a passing warning than a map of the crisis facing Tehran.

Since the killing of Ali Khamenei and the wartime rise of his son Mojtaba, Iran’s system has not collapsed. Nor has it become transparent. What appears to have emerged is a less centralized, more militarized and more opaque order: its old arbiter is gone, its new leader is unseen, and rival camps are testing how far they can move without breaking the Islamic Republic they all want to preserve.

No one outside Iran’s innermost circle can know exactly who is making decisions. But the visible signs point to a system divided more over tactics than survival. The familiar split between “hardliners” and “moderates” may capture some real tensions, but it can also serve as a useful false dichotomy – for Tehran, for foreign governments and, most dangerously, against the Iranian public.

For ordinary Iranians, the question is not whether one faction speaks more softly than another. The deeper point is that the same system still controls war, repression, public life and the limits of political choice. The names may shift; the method endures.

The generals, the circles and an unseen leader

On paper, Mojtaba Khamenei is Iran’s Supreme Leader. In practice, he has not yet performed the role his father played for decades: appearing publicly, speaking directly, ending factional arguments and signaling the final line of the state.

That absence matters, but it should not be overstated. Mojtaba may still be consulted or asked to formally approve decisions. The more important point is that power appears to have moved into a harder-to-see structure: a security-led order shaped by overlapping circles that compete, cooperate and distrust one another.

Sources told Iran International in early April that tensions between President Masoud Pezeshkian and the military leadership had pushed the government into a “complete political deadlock,” with the IRGC effectively assuming control over key state functions.

The Guards blocked presidential appointments, including Pezeshkian’s effort to name a new intelligence minister, while Ahmad Vahidi, the IRGC commander and a central figure in the current security order, insisted that sensitive posts be selected and managed directly by the Guards under wartime conditions.

Sources also said Pezeshkian repeatedly sought an urgent meeting with Mojtaba but received no response, while a “military council” of senior IRGC officers enforced a security cordon around the new Supreme Leader and prevented government reports from reaching him.

But the IRGC should not be treated as one simple faction. Almost every major actor in the current crisis has some link to the Guards, the war generation, the security apparatus or the Supreme Leader’s office. The useful distinction is not “IRGC versus civilians,” but the different circles now competing over how the system survives.

One circle is the older intelligence-security network around Mojtaba. It includes figures such as Hossein Taeb, the former head of the IRGC Intelligence Organization, and Mohammad Ali Jafari, the former IRGC commander. Mojtaba’s old ties to the Habib Battalion from the Iran-Iraq War matter because they helped create personal links with men who later rose through intelligence, security and repression structures. This is less a formal faction than a network of trust built over decades.

Another circle is closer to the negotiation-facing track. It includes Pezeshkian, Parliament Speaker Bagher Ghalibaf, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Ali Bagheri Kani, a former nuclear negotiator.

Their relative openness to talks may make them more flexible tactically, but not “moderates” in any democratic sense. They operate inside the Islamic Republic’s security logic. But they have been more visibly tied to keeping a diplomatic channel open with Washington and trying to turn pressure into some form of agreement.

A third circle appears closer to direct military and security decision-making. Vahidi is the key figure here, followed by Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, a former senior IRGC commander now heading the Supreme National Security Council.

Other security-state figures – including former police chief Esmail Ahmadi Moghaddam, former defense minister Amir Hatami, police chief Ahmadreza Radan and judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei – are often seen as closer to this coercive order than to the negotiation-facing track.

A fourth circle is the ideological pressure camp around Saeed Jalili, the former nuclear negotiator and ultrahardline security figure; Hamid Rasaei, Amirhossein Sabeti and Mohammad Nabavian, hardline lawmakers; and Sadegh Mahsouli, a key patron of the Paydari current. This camp is especially hostile to talks with Washington. Its role in the current crisis is to define compromise as betrayal, attack negotiators and claim to defend the Supreme Leader’s red lines.

These are not clean factions. Their members overlap, and their positions can shift. All appear invested in the survival of the Islamic Republic. What differs is their method: tactical negotiation, coercive escalation, ideological discipline, or some combination of the three.

The best reading is not a name, but a map of relationships.

The rift breaks into public

The dispute over talks with the United States has made those networks visible.

Iran International reported on April 10 that senior officials were divided over the authority of the delegation set to negotiate with Washington in Islamabad.

Sources said Vahidi wanted to curb the authority of Ghalibaf, the parliament speaker and former IRGC commander who had led the negotiating team, and Araghchi, the foreign minister. Vahidi also wanted Zolghadr included in the team and sought to prevent any negotiation over Iran’s missile program.

The dispute widened as the talks faltered. Sources told Iran International on April 23 that a delegation was ready to leave for further talks when a message from Mojtaba’s inner circle ruled out discussion of nuclear issues and reprimanded the foreign ministry team over earlier negotiations. Araghchi warned that attending under such constraints would serve no purpose.

A day later, sources said Ghalibaf stepped down as head of the negotiating team after being reprimanded for trying to include the nuclear issue in talks. Araghchi then traveled to Islamabad alone to deliver Tehran’s proposal, which was later rejected by Trump, according to media reports.

The latest signs point to an even messier picture. Two sources familiar with the matter told Iran International that Pezeshkian and Ghalibaf are now seeking Araghchi’s removal, accusing him of acting less like a cabinet minister and more like an aide to Vahidi. The sources said Araghchi had coordinated with the IRGC commander over the past two weeks without properly informing the president.

That is an important turn. It suggests the rift is not simply between “negotiators” and “hardliners.” Even figures associated with the diplomatic track are accusing one another of serving the security command.

The public signs have been just as revealing. Ghalibaf defended indirect talks after hardline critics accused him of betrayal and even hinted at a coup. He framed diplomacy not as retreat, but as another front in the conflict – a way to turn military gains into political outcomes.

Iran International later learned that Ghalibaf went further in a private meeting, describing figures including Jalili and Sabeti as extremist militia-like actors who would destroy Iran. He accused them of using state television and mobilized hardline supporters to intensify opposition to negotiations.

Then came the “magic beanstalk” fight – an unusually revealing media war inside the hardline camp.

Tasnim, a news agency linked to the IRGC, republished an editorial mocking maximalist demands for a deal, including full sanctions removal and a comprehensive ceasefire with Iran’s regional allies, as a fantasy akin to expecting a “magic beanstalk.” Raja News, close to Jalili’s camp, accused Tasnim of weakening the Supreme Leader’s red lines and repeating the path that led to the nuclear deal it calls “pure damage.”

Tasnim removed the article but hit back sharply, accusing Raja News of sowing division and helping complete Trump’s project in Iran. It also referred to arrests over “suspicious movements to undermine sacred unity.”

That language is not routine factional criticism. It shows a fight inside the revolutionary camp over who gets to define loyalty, who can speak for the leader, and who will be blamed if talks fail or concessions become unavoidable.

What the rift is not

The rift is real, but it should not be mistaken for an opening.

It is not a contest between democrats and authoritarians. It is not proof that Iran has a liberal faction waiting to be empowered. It is not even a simple split between the IRGC and the civilian state, because the so-called civilian figures operate inside a system shaped by the Guards, the Supreme Leader’s office and the security state.

The split is between factions of the Islamic Republic arguing over how best to preserve the system.

From Washington, Marco Rubio made a similar point. “They’re all hardliners in Iran,” the US secretary of state told Fox News. But he drew a distinction between hardliners who understand they still have to run a country and an economy, and those “completely motivated by theology.”

Rubio described the president, foreign minister, parliament speaker and other political officials as hardliners too, but said they also know that “people have to eat” and that the government has to pay salaries. The harder core, he said, includes the IRGC, the Supreme Leader and the council around him. “Unfortunately,” Rubio added, “the hardliners, with an apocalyptic vision of the future, have the ultimate power in that country.”

Trump has used harsher language, saying Iran’s government is “seriously fractured” and that its leaders are struggling to figure out who is in charge. Those remarks should be read both as Washington’s assessment and as part of its pressure campaign.

Tehran answered with a unity slogan that unintentionally made the same point. “There are no hardliners or moderates in Iran; we are all ‘Iranian’ and ‘revolutionary,’” Pezeshkian wrote on X. He added that with “full obedience to the Supreme Leader,” Iran would make the “criminal aggressor” regret its actions.

The same line was then posted by Ghalibaf, Araghchi, Mohseni-Ejei and other senior officials. It was meant to deny division. But for many Iranians, the phrase “Iranian and revolutionary” says something else too: inside the Islamic Republic, political difference still ends where loyalty to the revolution begins.

The better reading is that the Islamic Republic is divided over tactics, not survival; and more militarized, not more moderate. That is where the trap begins: a real rift can still serve a false choice.

A woman wears a badge with a picture of Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, during a rally in Tehran, Iran, April 29, 2026.

The false choice: bad, worse and the politics of leverage

The “hardliner versus moderate” frame has always served more than one audience.

For foreign diplomats, it offers a familiar temptation: make a deal with the less bad side before the worse side takes over. For the Islamic Republic, it offers a warning: give us concessions, because the alternative is chaos or escalation. For Iranians, it narrows politics to a suffocating choice: accept this faction, or suffer that one.

Iran’s internal divisions may be real, but the Islamic Republic has long benefited from presenting politics as a choice between bad and worse – a choice that narrows the imagination of both Iranian society and foreign diplomats.

That is the false dichotomy at the center of the current crisis.

The rift is real: there are disputes over talks, nuclear red lines, the negotiating team and how much to concede. But the rift is also distorted: Pezeshkian, Araghchi and Ghalibaf may be more negotiation-facing than Jalili or Nabavian, but they are not outside the system.

And the rift can be useful. A negotiator can point to hardliners to seek concessions. A hardliner can accuse a negotiator of betrayal to raise the cost of compromise. The state can deny division in public while allowing enough ambiguity to make foreign governments wonder who can deliver a deal.

When no one clearly owns the decision, no one clearly owns the consequences. Talks can be authorized, denied, resumed and scrapped. A delegation can be sent, restrained, reprimanded and replaced. The people are then told not to ask who is responsible, because the country is at war and unity is sacred.

Whether spontaneous, managed, or both, the Islamic Republic has repeatedly turned internal factionalism into a political instrument. The public is asked to choose between bad and worse; foreign governments are asked to negotiate with bad to avoid worse.

What the rift does – and does not – change

The immediate consequence is both diplomatic and domestic. Talks become harder to arrange, harder to interpret and harder to trust, while Iranians remain exposed to decisions made by a system they cannot hold accountable.

This does not mean Iran cannot negotiate. It means any deal must survive several internal tests: the security core’s calculation, Mojtaba Khamenei’s formal blessing or silence, ideological backlash, state media narratives and the regime’s fear of looking weak to its own base.

The challenge may not be that Tehran cannot send a negotiator, but that no envoy can easily bind the system behind him.

For Iranians, however, the debate over who rules Tehran is not an abstract puzzle. It is lived through decisions made behind walls: war, economic pressure, repression, the threat of crackdowns on any renewed protest movement, and the shrinking space for public life.

The rival circles now visible in Tehran may disagree over tactics, but they all operate inside a system built to preserve itself before it answers to society.

The Islamic Republic may be less centralized than before, but that does not make it more accountable. It may be more divided in public, but that does not make it more open. It may need diplomacy, but that does not make its negotiators representatives of the people.

The internal map has shifted. The old supreme leader is gone. The new one is unseen. Security networks appear stronger. The ideological camp is louder. Negotiators are more exposed. Rival circles are more willing to wound each other in public.

But for the Iranian people, the core fact has not changed enough. They are still being asked to live with the consequences of decisions they cannot see, made by men who compete for power while agreeing on the survival of a system that denies the public any real power.