Ifølge New York Times’ byråsjef i FN, Farnaz Fassihi, en dyp splittelse innad i det iranske lederskapet. På den ene siden står en fraksjon rundt president Masoud Pezeshkian som ønsker forhandlinger med Washington. På den andre siden står hardlinere som er sterkt imot enhver avtale med USA.
Pezeshkian skal mandag ha blitt angrepet av en gruppe hardlinere som ropte «død over forsoneren» under begravelsesprosesjonen for den drepte øverste leder Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, skriver Fassihi.
En video publisert på sosiale medier skal også vise det som skal være Irans utenriksminister, Abbas Araghchi, som ble kastet stein etter og jaget nedover en smug under samme seremoni.
Government officials and supporters called for the arrest of the people who attacked the president and foreign minister, and urged the judiciary to hold the hard-liners accountable.
Not long after those incidents, hostilities over the Strait of Hormuz had begun again. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps targeted several commercial ships passing through the critical waterway this week …
By Wednesday night, the United States was striking Iran again. Two senior Iranian officials, with knowledge of internal leadership deliberations, described the situation inside Iran’s political circles as being in disarray. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss government security matters. They said no decision has been made about how to proceed — whether to resume conflict or continue diplomatic engagement — and that a blame game was in full swing within Iran. But the officials said Iran would retaliate forcefully to new attacks, echoing statements made this week by the Revolutionary Guards.
Yousef Pezeshkian, the son and adviser of the president, wrote a long defense of the policy of engagement with the United States on social media. He condemned the attacks on his father and other officials by hard-liners. “If this anger is directed at our own officials and targets domestic unity and larger Islamic unity, it means it has become a tool for the enemy,” he said.