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Days after Iran’s management projected a unified entrance, undermining the long-cited moderate-vs.-hardliner divide, President Donald Trump canceled deliberate talks with Tehran in Islamabad, Pakistan, citing “infighting and confusion” contained in the regime.
Iranian American specialists argue that social media posts from Iran’s new Supreme Chief Mojtaba Khamenei, President Masoud Pezeshkian and different key officers reveal that the “good cop, unhealthy cop” tactic that the regime exploited to deceive adversaries and safe beneficiant concessions in nuclear negotiations has collapsed.
In a Reality Social publish Saturday, Trump introduced he canceled the journey, citing “an excessive amount of time wasted on touring” and “an excessive amount of work!”
“In addition to which, there’s great infighting and confusion inside their ‘management,'” the president added, noting “no one is aware of who’s in cost, together with them.”
President Donald Trump speaks from the Cross Corridor of the White Home in Washington, D.C., April 1, 2026, updating the nation on the warfare in Iran. (Getty Photos)
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“Additionally, we’ve all of the playing cards, they’ve none!” Trump wrote. “In the event that they wish to speak, all they should do is name!!!”
The implosion of the hardline-moderate dichotomy inside the regime might have profound penalties for Trump’s strategy to the atomic talks in Islamabad, specialists mentioned. Trump appeared to allude to a blurry divide between factions inside Iran final week.
“Iran is having a really laborious time determining who their chief is! They only don’t know! The infighting is between the ‘Hardliners,’ who’ve been dropping BADLY on the battlefield, and the ‘Moderates,’ who aren’t very reasonable in any respect (however gaining respect!), and it’s CRAZY!” Trump wrote in an X publish Thursday.
Mojtaba Khamenei, the brand new supreme chief of Iran and second son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, attends a gathering in Tehran, Iran. (Hamed Jafarnejad/ISNA/WANA/Reuters)
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Iran’s Supreme Chief Khamenei rapidly fired again, claiming “as a result of unusual unity created amongst compatriots, a fracture has occurred within the enemy.”
“With sensible gratitude for this blessing, cohesion has develop into even better and extra steel-like, and the enemies will develop into extra wretched and diminished,” Khamenei wrote. “The enemy’s media operations, by concentrating on the minds and psyches of the individuals, intend to undermine nationwide unity and safety; could our negligence not permit this sinister intent to come back to fruition.”
Mariam Memarsadeghi, a senior fellow at The Macdonald-Laurier Institute and founder and director of the Cyrus Discussion board for Iran’s Future, instructed Fox Information Digital the Islamic Republic has, for many years, fooled Western policymakers by sending moderates to negotiations as a “window dressing for its terror and subjugation.”
A poster of Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei is pasted on a motorbike windshield as authorities supporters collect in Tehran on April 9, 2026, marking the fortieth day for the reason that killing of his father, Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. (Vahid Salemi/AP)
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The officers would then inform their counterparts that they’re underneath strain from hardliners, implying that the West should make concessions to strengthen them internally.
“Due to the warfare, the Trump administration is in a remarkably advantageous state of affairs vis-à-vis the imperial terror state, one by no means earlier than tried, a lot much less achieved,” Memarsadeghi mentioned.
“However each time Trump says regime change has already happened, he denies America the chance to lastly, really be rid of the world’s prime sponsor of terror and the existential risk it poses not simply to the individuals of Iran however to all of the world.”
Navid Mohebbi, who labored as a Persian media analyst for the State Department’s Public Affairs Bureau, cautioned that whereas rivalries and factions do exist inside the Islamic Republic, they’re united on the regime’s core rules.
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“Their disagreements are primarily over ways, not basic course,” Mohebbi instructed Fox Information Digital, stressing that actual decision-making energy in Iran has all the time rested with the supreme chief and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
“So-called moderates have by no means had the ultimate say on key strategic points and are sometimes used to melt the regime’s picture overseas,” he mentioned. “From the attitude of the Iranian individuals, there was little distinction. Throughout administrations labeled ‘reasonable’ or ‘hardline,’ the system has consistently relied on repression.”
Mohebbi cited the instance of Iranian regime President Hassan Rouhani, who introduced himself as a reasonable however whose safety forces violently killed 1,500 protesters in the course of the November 2019 rebellion.
Members of safety forces watch over the group throughout a funeral procession for IRGC Navy Chief Alireza Tangsiri and different senior naval commanders killed in U.S.-Israeli strikes in late March in Tehran, Iran, on April 1, 2026. (Majid Saeedi/Getty Photos)
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“The identical sample has continued underneath Masoud Pezeshkian within the January 2026 protest bloodbath, reinforcing the truth that these labels haven’t translated into significant change on the bottom,” he mentioned.
A regional official, nonetheless, insisted there are clashes between moderates and hardliners in Iran. The official instructed Fox Information Digital that Pezeshkian is a reasonable, however he “couldn’t even make good on his marketing campaign promise concerning web freedom. To be trustworthy, he’s not even been capable of do s—.
“The joint response by the heads of the three branches of energy was in response to Trump’s reference to the difficulty of rift and likewise to the truth that there are certainly hardliners and moderates,” the official added.
“Look, every time Iran needs to make concessions, they throw moderates underneath the bus in order that the moderates make a deal, after which, the hardliners blame them for a similar concessions all of them had agreed to make.”
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Lawdan Bazargan, who was imprisoned by the Islamic Republic within the Eighties for her political dissident actions, instructed Fox Information Digital that what officers are seeing now just isn’t the disappearance of the divide, however the publicity of what that divide really was.
“In actuality, all of those figures — Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf [speaker of Iran’s parliament], Saeed Jalili [member of the Expediency Discernment Council], Pezeshkian, Ahmad Vahidi [head of the IRGC], Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei [head of Iran’s judiciary] — function inside the similar ideological framework,” Bazargan mentioned.
“They’re all dedicated to the preservation of the system, the projection of energy within the area and confrontation with what they outline as ‘the forces of evil,’ particularly the US and Israel.”
