On June 20th, Iranian state television cut short a live broadcast of Mahmoud Nabavian, a hardline MP opposed to negotiations with the U.S., as he read from what he said were Mojtaba Khamenei's private letters casting doubt on the new interim deal with Washington.
Ten days later, defending that same agreement on air, top negotiator and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf had his own pre-recorded broadcast cut short mid-programme, just as he pointed to a 2023 deal with the U.S. reached under President Ebrahim Raisi, arguing that the new interim deal's terms echoed what hardliners themselves had once accepted.
The opposite stances and interruptions of two conservative politicians reveal Iran’s main political contest today. The country’s political elite is no longer divided between reformists and conservatives, since the Iranian political landscape has consistently shrunk over the years.
Rather, the battle is now raging within the conservative establishment itself, which dominates Iranian politics and holds at least two-thirds of the 290-seat parliament. This is a contest involving politicians, clerics, state media figures, and security officials, over how Iran should use its power, even if the establishment's own elasticity means the two sides resist being cleanly sorted into opposing camps.
Both sides begin from the same premise: the Islamic Republic survives through deterrence, coercive power and the ability to impose costs on its adversaries. Yet, one side is made of the state’s higher echelons which have sought to calibrate Iranian power projection to optimise political outcomes and framed the interim deal with the U.S. as the best possible outcome of war efforts.
The other side, largely free from governing responsibilities, has castigated the interim deal as a concession given too soon before Iran's attrition strategy could do real damage to the global economy, and particularly, Trump's presidency.
Same premise, different math
The pragmatic conservative camp, anchored by Ghalibaf, allied with Masoud Pezeshkian's government and drawing on parts of the security establishment, is clear-eyed about Iran's limits, and treats compromise not as weakness but as how a hard-won bargain gets banked.
