Peace talks between Iran and the U.S. are proceeding neither quickly nor smoothly this week, in part because Iran’s government “has not yet decided” if it will participate in a second round of peace negotiations on how to end the war. One factor that explains the sluggishness is that Iran’s government is reportedly unable to settle on a clear counteroffer to the U.S.’ latest position on ending the war.
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That may sound like a problem of Iranian dysfunction, but it’s also one for which President Donald Trump bears enormous responsibility — since he has killed so many of Iran’s leaders. Trump has sown the seeds for a drawn-out conclusion to a war he desperately wants to end.
One cannot pursue “regime change” and lighter-touch coercive diplomacy at the same time.
Iran’s power structure has become more decentralized, more factionalized and more reactionary in the wake of many of Iran’s political and military leaders being assassinated in U.S. and Israeli bombings.
Axios, citing three U.S. officials, reported that Iran’s government is riven by “warring factions” that cannot settle on a “coherent” position for the next round of talks with the U.S. “Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is barely communicating. The [Iran Revolutionary Guard] generals now in control of the country, and Iran’s civilian negotiators are openly at odds over strategy,” Axios reported.
With different centers of power that don’t appear to be communicating well, Iran’s ability to negotiate and hew to clear policy positions is compromised. We saw this play out last week. Hours after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the Strait of Hormuz was fully open following a ceasefire in Lebanon, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps made a conflicting announcement, saying, “Passage is only possible with the permission of the IRGC Navy.” The IRGC-affiliated news agency Tasnim then blasted Araghchi for “a complete lack of tact in information dissemination.”
Axios attributed the fracture within Iran’s government to Israel’s assassination of Ali Larijani, the previous secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, who “had the authority and political weight to hold Iran’s decision-making together.”
That tracks with what geostrategic analyst Imran Khalid observed in a recent column for MS NOW:
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