Financial Times:

Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran

Iranian hardliners have reignited a bitter power struggle with reformist politicians as the aftermath of the country’s 12-day war with Israel provokes a fierce contest over the future of the theocracy.

Iran’s setbacks at the hands of Israel and the US, whose campaigns last month killed senior military commanders and largely destroyed the country’s nuclear facilities, have in recent days fuelled recriminations and rancorous debate within the Islamic republic.

Hardline ideologues, who advocate for perennial enmity with the west, have railed against the possibility of re-engaging with the US and attacked Iran’s reformist president Masoud Pezeshkian, who this week suggested he remained amenable to negotiations with Washington.

“We still believe the window for diplomacy is open and we’ll seriously pursue this peaceful path,” Pezeshkian wrote on X on Monday. Reformists argue that the Islamic republic can only survive by doubling down on diplomacy, relaxing its ideological strictures and opening up its economy.

The president provoked outrage from hardline lawmakers last week after he sought to play down the regime slogan “Death to America” in an interview with conservative media personality Tucker Carlson.

Pezeshkian claimed the phrase, a hallmark of state rallies since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, was not meant to be taken literally.

Some two dozen hardline members of parliament later wrote to the president to criticise him, with MP Amir Hossein Sabeti warning of a “parliamentary shift of approach” if the government does not change course, which some observers interpreted as a tacit impeachment threat.

“I was horrified,” Abolfazl Zohrevand, a prominent hardline MP, told local media last week of Pezeshkian’s comments. The president “lacks the minimum qualifications for this position . . . and whitewashed the US. We have concluded that the main task of the government is to put an end to the Islamic Revolution.”

Iran had engaged in several rounds of talks with the US over the country’s nuclear programme before Israel launched its surprise attack, which Washington later joined before brokering a fragile ceasefire on June 24.

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