For a brief period, it seemed possible to believe that the announcement of a US-Iranian agreement to end months of bloody confrontation and reopen the Strait of Hormuz might produce something rare in the Islamic republic: a unified political front.
Instead, within hours, the ceasefire framework did what no American airstrike or Israeli assassination ever could. It cracked open the edifice of the revolutionary state along its deepest internal fault line.
On one side stand the hardline conservatives, heirs to the state’s founding theology of perpetual resistance, who see the deal as a humiliating capitulation that squanders the strategic leverage earned through immense sacrifice.
On the other side are the pragmatists and reformists, led by figures such as Parliament Speaker Mohamed Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who view the agreement as a necessary and realistic settlement before an exhausted nation is drained even further.
But to understand this as a simple policy dispute is to miss the far more complex reality. The agreement has become a proxy for a struggle over the very identity of the Iranian state and whether it remains a revolutionary vanguard committed to the “Axis of Resistance” and the overthrow of US influence, or whether it transforms into a normal, if still adversarial, regional power that prioritises economic survival and internal stability over ideological export.
Lurking beneath every public statement is a more immediate question: which faction will emerge from this transition with its power and patronage intact?
The conservative reaction has been swift and ferocious. The ultraconservative Paydari Front and influential hardline parliamentarians have not merely criticised the agreement’s technical clauses; they have denounced its entire philosophical foundation.
For them, the recent war, which saw the assassination of the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the killing of prominent nuclear scientists and top commanders in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and devastating economic losses, was a trial that Iran passed with distinction.
They believe that Tehran proved it could strangle the global economy through the Strait of Hormuz, confound the United States and its allies, and establish itself as an indispensable strategic player.
To abandon that leverage in exchange for the reopening of trade routes and the partial unfreezing of assets is, in their telling, not a victory but a surrender.
Key figures such as MP Kamran Ghazanfari have dismissed government claims of success, calling the deal a “catastrophic capitulation” and a “blatant lie”. Hardline politician Mahmoud Nabavian went further, warning that signing the agreement would reduce Iran to a “colony of the United States”, while Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor of Iran’s most influential conservative daily, Kayhan, criticised the government for surrendering its strategic lever of control over the Strait of Hormuz.
The opposition focused on specific provisions it believes severely disadvantage Iran. Hardliners argue that reopening the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping gives up Iran’s primary military and economic leverage in exchange for inadequate concessions. They also expressed deep scepticism about the lack of firm guarantees for comprehensive sanctions relief or war compensation.
The backlash extended to public protests, including a rally in Tehran where demonstrators chanted slogans against lead negotiators Ghalibaf and Araghchi. Protesters were heard shouting, “death to Araghchi, the dishonourable compromiser,” while invoking the blood of the late supreme leader.
Online, conservatives launched a “We Will Not Accept” hashtag campaign. In response, government Spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani warned that “internal divisions would send a message of weakness to our adversaries.”
Yet what makes this conservative opposition truly potent is not its ideology alone but its institutional base. The IRGC and the Basij militia are not monolithic blocs, but their dominant factions recognise that any comprehensive opening to the West would inevitably recalibrate the domestic balance of power.
A successful agreement would strengthen the hand of technocrats, reformists, and the pragmatic figures around Ghalibaf and Araghchi, precisely the forces that might seek to limit the IRGC’s sprawling economic empire and curb the extra-judicial authority of the security apparatus.
For hardline commanders who have built careers and fortunes on the permanent mobilisation of the revolutionary state, the prospect of détente is an existential threat. They will not surrender their position quietly, and they possess the institutional muscle to make any deal a living nightmare for its proponents.
The pragmatist camp, by contrast, sees the world through an entirely different lens. President Masoud Pezeshkian, Araghchi, and Ghalibaf, an unlikely alliance of reformist and conservative-pragmatist figures, argue that military power unaccompanied by tangible economic relief is a hollow and unsustainable achievement.
They do not deny that Iran has demonstrated its strength; indeed, their entire negotiating posture rests on that demonstration.
Mehdi Mohammadi, an adviser to Ghalibaf, has been at pains to convince a sceptical public that this is not a repeat of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which imposed strict limits on Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.
“This time”, Mohammadi insisted, “we are not looking to shut down the nuclear programme and wait for sanctions to be lifted.”
In the pragmatists’ telling, Iran has conceded nothing of substance. It has not dismantled its nuclear facilities, handed over enriched uranium, or abandoned its right to close the strait again if necessary. Rather, it has obtained implicit American recognition that Iran is now part of the new regional balance.
For them, power is not an end in itself but a tool for negotiation, and the goal of negotiation is the survival and flourishing of the Iranian people and state, not the indefinite prolongation of revolutionary confrontation.
This is not merely an elite calculation. The popular dimension of this struggle cannot be overstated.
After months of conflict and economic devastation, ordinary Iranians have taken to social media with a clear and urgent message: they want an improvement in economic conditions, the lifting of sanctions, and lower inflation.
Inflation and unemployment have hollowed out the middle class, while a population in which more than 70 per cent are under the age of 30 has little memory of the revolutionary fervour of 1979 but daily experience of economic suffocation.
The widespread relief that greeted the announcement of the agreement poses a direct challenge to the hardline narrative.
“The conservatives fear any comprehensive political-economic deal because some see it as the path to a velvet revolution—a profound change from within that would require neither a popular uprising nor a foreign military strike but would instead unfold through the quiet logic of economic integration and social liberalisation,” a prominent Iranian reformist politician told Al-Ahram Weekly.
“The most serious episodes of unrest shaking the regime were not primarily driven by economic grievances, but by demands for political reform and personal freedoms. It is precisely this memory that fuels the deepest fears of many hardliners today. They worry that any opening towards the United States could act as a kind of cultural and political solvent, unleashing a velvet revolution akin to those that reshaped the former Soviet bloc, where external engagement hastened internal transformation,” he said.
Yet the pragmatists face a formidable dilemma. They must sell the deal to a public that has been burned before, most vividly by the 2015 nuclear agreement, which brought some sanctions relief but not the sustained economic transformation many Iranians had been promised, and which was ultimately abandoned by the Trump administration in 2018.
The hardliners are already weaponising this memory, warning that Washington cannot be trusted to honour its commitments and that any concessions will be met with further American demands.
There are, after all, powerful factions within the American right that would like nothing more than to see the deal fail, prevent Iran from reaping economic benefits, and return to a policy of maximum pressure.
If that happens, and if the lives of ordinary Iranians do not visibly and rapidly improve, popular support for the agreement will evaporate, and the conservative base will rally around the hardliners as the true defenders of national interests against an external conspiracy.
The pragmatists are therefore racing against time while confronting a profound deficit of trust on both sides of the negotiating table.
The conservatives understand this perfectly. That is why their objections stem not only from mistrust of America but also from concerns about the balance of power within the Iranian system itself.
If the deal succeeds, the influence of moderates and pragmatists will rise, and security institutions will be pushed into the background. If it fails, those same institutions will return to the centre of decision-making with even greater authority, strengthened by the argument that conciliation was a dangerous fantasy.
There is a further dimension to this struggle: the regional question. The hardliners view the “Axis of Resistance” made up of Hizbullah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and various Shia militias in Iraq not as a bargaining chip to be traded for sanctions relief, but as the ideological and strategic heart of the revolution.
They will resist any concessions that give Israel a freer hand in the region, and they see in the current negotiations the spectre of a grand bargain that would silence Iranian support for its proxies in exchange for American economic incentives. For them, that is not a deal; it is a betrayal of the revolution’s founding purpose.
The pragmatists are more flexible, but they too operate within constraints. They cannot be seen to abandon Hizbullah or the Houthis without losing credibility among their own supporters and provoking a backlash that would make the current conservative opposition appear tame.
The coming weeks will therefore witness not only negotiations between Tehran and Washington but also a fierce internal debate over what, exactly, Iran is willing to trade.
The most significant consequence of this division concerns the future of the nuclear negotiations, which remain unresolved within the broader framework.
The United States will watch the factional struggle in Tehran with intense interest, calculating how much it needs to offer in limited concessions to help reformists sell the deal domestically.
Too little, and the pragmatists will be left exposed, unable to deliver the economic relief they have promised. Too much, and American hawks will cry appeasement, potentially derailing the agreement from the other side.
This is a delicate dance, and neither side has demonstrated much grace in performing it. Thus, in the coming weeks, the political battle inside Tehran may prove more consequential than the negotiations themselves.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 18 June, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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