Iran International
As hopes for talks with the United States flicker and fade, Iran’s chronic factional infighting once again appears to have torpedoed a diplomatic opening—even before it properly began.
With negotiations now hanging in the balance, conflicting signals from Tehran have reinforced a familiar pattern: internal rivalries routinely overwhelm coherence at moments requiring discipline.
On Wednesday, Axios reported that the planned talks were no longer expected to go ahead, while Israel’s Channel 12 went further, citing officials as saying the process had been cancelled altogether.
Iranian and US officials have not publicly confirmed that account, but the drift has been unmistakable.
The unraveling followed days of public discord inside Iran’s political establishment.
After President Masoud Pezeshkian said he had “ordered” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to travel to Turkey to discuss arrangements for talks, ultraconservative MP Amir Hossein Sabeti attacked the move in a post on X.
“Mr. Araghchi, our people are waiting for a pre-emptive action against the enemy, not negotiations. And you got up and went to Turkey?!”
The remarks ignored—or deliberately blurred—the fact that decisions on negotiations with the United States rest with the Supreme Leader, not the president. They also illustrated how calls for escalation are often deployed less as strategy than as factional positioning, regardless of the risks such rhetoric may invite.
A second episode followed when ultraconservative MP Hamid Rasai targeted Vice President Jafar Ghaempanah over an X post responding to Pezeshkian’s message about Araghchi’s trip.
After Ghaempanah wrote, “No war is good, and no peace necessarily means surrender,” Rasai questioned his loyalty and invoked his U.S.-based son, escalating the attack with religious language.
Such exchanges are not aberrations. Factional conflict has been embedded in the Islamic Republic since its inception.
Early struggles between Islamic liberals and religious fundamentalists gave way to rivalries among clerical factions, later morphing into competition between reformists and conservatives, and, since the mid-2000s, a sharper divide between hardliners and moderates.
For years, the Supreme Leader functioned as a broker among these camps, preserving a degree of political coherence. As power has become more centralized and alignments more rigid, that balancing role has weakened.
Vested interests across the system have repeatedly shown a willingness to obstruct—and at times actively sabotage—diplomatic processes rather than allow rivals to claim credit for engagement with Washington.
As many commentators, including former President Hassan Rouhani, have long observed, the fiercest resistance to talks has often come not from principled opposition to diplomacy itself, but from fear of who might benefit politically if diplomacy succeeds.
The result is a recurring pattern in which negotiations collapse not only under external pressure, but under the weight of Iran’s own internal rivalries.
Tehran’s unveiling of a towering statue depicting the Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling before pre-Islamic Persian King Shapur I has renewed criticism of the Islamic Republic’s appeal to nationalist sentiment following the June war with Israel.
For over forty years, the theocracy purged ancient Persian history from schoolbooks, replacing it with post-Islamic narratives. But after the 12-day conflict with Israel, officials have turned to the distant pre-Islamic past to rally a divided society.
From murals of ancient kings and soldiers to patriotic songs added to Shi’ite mourning ceremonies performed before Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Tehran now embraces imagery once deemed heretical by its own revolutionary ethos.
'Kneel before Iran' campaign
Tehran’s Revolution (Enghelab) Square was the scene of an unusual spectacle on Friday as officials unveiled a massive bronze statue depicting Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling in submission before Sassanid King Shapur I, commemorating Iran’s victory at the Battle of Edessa (260 AD).
The event was held under the slogan “Kneel before Iran,” part of what authorities describe as a campaign to project “national unity and historical pride” following the June war with Israel.
Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani, a staunch ultraconservative, said on X: “Enmity with Great Iran can only end in kneeling before this historic nation.”
Municipal official Davood Goodarzi said the installation would be accompanied by visual displays depicting “other victories of Iranians over foreign aggressors,” including the defeat of British forces by local commander Rais-Ali Delvari, Mirza Kuchak Khan’s resistance against Russian troops, and Surena’s triumph over Rome at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE.
The goal, Goodarzi said, is “strengthening concepts such as national dignity, social unity, and Iranian identity.”
The statue, he said, would remain temporarily at Revolution Square before being moved to a city gateway “where it will stand as the first emblem of Iran before diplomats and foreign visitors.”
Unveiled women were allowed to attend the unveiling ceremony—an uncommon scene at events organized by Tehran’s ultra-hardline municipality.
The turn to the pre-Islamic past
The sharp reversal also recalls remarks once made by Khamenei. In a 2011 speech, he asserted that “all the great military victories of this nation came after Islam,” dismissing pre-Islamic accounts as “things that are not documented.”
In 1987, he had said that prophets triumphed over kings such as Cyrus and that “nothing remains of these monarchs in history but names remembered with derision.”
Nevertheless, pro-government social media accounts have now gone so far as to circulate posters equating Khamenei himself with Shapur, showing him standing with a staff as Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump kneel before him. The caption reads: “You will kneel before Iran.”
'Hypocrisy'
Pro-government figures have hailed the move as a patriotic success. Conservative political reporter Hossein Saremi posted: “Today’s grand Iranian gathering showed that people and the state share one essence: Iran itself. Nothing can take our homeland away.”
Others, however, called the spectacle “hypocrisy.” Journalist Gholamhossein Pashaei wrote on X: “Every year you close Pasargadae to stop people from celebrating Cyrus Day, yet you unveil Shapur’s statue in Enghelab Square with drums and fireworks during Fatimiyya (mourning period)!”
Dissident commentator Hamid Asafi called the ceremony “a perfect snapshot of the Islamic Republic’s contradictions.”
On Telegram he wrote: “A week ago they closed Cyrus’s tomb out of fear of the crowds, and now they glorify Shapur in the same breath. The Islamic Republic fears living history but poses for selfies with its corpse.”
He added: “They know people no longer respond to rosaries and sermons. That’s why they’ve brought history back to the stage—in a controlled costume. If they can’t erase the past, they’ll try to own it.”
The irony deepened as UNESCO formally recognized Cyrus’s Charter as one of the earliest human-rights documents.
President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on X: “Iran, the cradle of dialogue, justice, and coexistence, can still inspire peace today.”
Users swiftly replied, questioning how such pride could coexist with a government that blocks access to Cyrus’s tomb each year to those wishing to visit it on his birthday.