US President Donald Trump says Iran’s leadership is divided. But that falls short. Tehran is in the middle of a systemic change – those profiting from the power vacuum are threatening to be even more radical.
April 23, 2026, 06:15April 23, 2026, 06:15
Michael Wrase, Limassol / ch media
It was not without a certain amount of schadenfreude that Donald Trump referred to the “seriously divided Iranian government” in his post on Truth Social written on Wednesday night. He now wants to buy time for them by ordering the “suspension of attacks”. She should then submit a “unified proposal”.
Revered as a war hero: The killed Navy commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Alireza Tangsiri, on a poster in Tehran.Image: keystone
The fact that the new Iranian leadership does not speak with one tongue has been no longer a secret since the weekend before last: In the run-up to the first round of negotiations with the USA in Islamabad, the 77 members of the Iranian delegation fought each other so fiercely that the Pakistani hosts spent more time mediating within the Iranian delegation than between the USA and Iran.
However, the obvious explanation, namely a split between diplomats willing to compromise and intransigent ideological hardliners, falls short. What is taking place in Iran is a systemic change that is far from complete.
Iranian women with pictures of revolutionary leader Mojtaba Khamenei and his predecessor.Image: keystone
For more than four decades, the Islamic Republic functioned as a hybrid system: a cleric at the top – most recently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for 37 years – acted as a kind of hinge between the various power blocs: clergy, military, technocrats and ideologues. This balance has been broken since Khameini was killed in an Israeli airstrike at the end of February. His son Mojtaba was appointed as his successor. But he hasn’t been seen in public yet.
“It could well be that he is no longer alive,” believes Ali Vaez, Iran expert at the International Crises Group. For the time being, however, this is not a problem for the Revolutionary Guards: whether he is dead or alive does not matter to them at the moment. According to most Iran experts, in the power vacuum created in Iran following Khamenei’s death, the Revolutionary Guards have taken effective control of the country; not through a coup, but through the “creeping logic of war”: whoever fights, commands. Whoever orders, decides.
Leave the president alone
During his mediation visits to Tehran, Pakistani army chief Asim Munir ignored President Peseschkian and met exclusively with generals of the Revolutionary Guards: the central authority figures are General Ahmad Vahadi and Mohammed Bgaher Zolghadr, who, as secretary of the National Security Council, coordinates the Iranian military, intelligence and foreign policy and at the same time helps shape all important decisions on war and internal security.
One of Pakistan’s army chief Munir’s interlocutors was Ali Abdollahi Aliabadi, who is responsible for the operational leadership of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the event of war. The hardliner had insulted Trump as “aggressive and belligerent” and predicted the “opening of the gates of hell” to the US Army.
More of a “lame duck” with no decision-making power: Iran’s President Massoud Paseschkian.Image: keystone
No decisions of political and strategic importance can be made without the blessing of Generals Aliabadi, Vahidi and Zolghadr, who, like all other high-ranking Iranian military officers, fought in the war against Iraq in the early 1980s. Parliament Speaker Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf also belongs to this force field. He led the Iranian negotiating delegation in Islamabad.
The 64-year-old is sometimes described as a reformer. In reality, the trained jumbo jet pilot is also a hardliner – which makes him “capable of acting”. “Ghalibaf is one of the last survivors of the old regime who has what it takes to be a leading figure,” says Iranian historian Araash Azizi.
“For him, a lifelong dream is coming true.”
The hardliners continue to push for radicalism
When Ghalibaf flew to Islamabad, he had photos of children who died in US attacks on a school not far from the Strait of Hormuz placed on the empty seats. “You travel with me,” he wrote on X. Ghalibaf has mastered the media language of the 21st century: short cuts, symbolic politics and social networks.
But his position is not unassailable either. In the eyes of the ultra-hardliners among the Revolutionary Guards, both Ghalibaf and the eloquent Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi are still far too moderate. The fact that they can act publicly is mainly due to the fact that the Trump administration wants to negotiate with them. This gives them some kind of immunity, at least for the time being. (aargauerzeitung.ch)