When Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, spoke at an event in late August, he dismissed calls for direct talks with Washington as “superficial” and declared the conflict with the United States “unsolvable.” America’s real aim, he said, was to make Iran “obedient”—an insult Iranians would resist “with all their strength.”

Khamenei’s words, though influential and commanding, are only one strand of Iran’s fractured postwar politics. In Tehran, rival factions have rushed forward with statements and proposals for how the country should respond to the devastation: thousands of casualties, shattered defenses, and a nuclear program badly damaged but not destroyed.

When Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, spoke at an event in late August, he dismissed calls for direct talks with Washington as “superficial” and declared the conflict with the United States “unsolvable.” America’s real aim, he said, was to make Iran “obedient”—an insult Iranians would resist “with all their strength.”

Khamenei’s words, though influential and commanding, are only one strand of Iran’s fractured postwar politics. In Tehran, rival factions have rushed forward with statements and proposals for how the country should respond to the devastation: thousands of casualties, shattered defenses, and a nuclear program badly damaged but not destroyed.

Beneath the clamor lies a deeper question: What real choice has Washington offered Iran beyond pressure and hostility? Out of this internal Iranian debate, a tentative middle ground is emerging—one that moves Iran further from any hope of detente with the United States and Europe and closer to a more fundamental pivot toward China.

It is within this unsettled political landscape that the Reform Front—today the main coalition of Iran’s reformist parties—has emerged as a focal point of debate. With roots in the movement that carried Mohammad Khatami to the presidency in 1997, it has long advocated democratic change at home and improved relations with the West. Despite years of repression, it remains influential, having backed Masoud Pezeshkian in last year’s snap presidential election following conservative Ebrahim Raisi’s death in a helicopter crash. Against this backdrop, the Reform Front’s postwar “National Reconciliation” statement landed with unusual force: It called for releasing political prisoners, reforming state media, restoring public trust, and—most provocatively—voluntarily suspending uranium enrichment in exchange for the complete lifting of sanctions.

The backlash was immediate. Hard-line outlets branded the statement naive, a “surrender,” even treasonous. Abdullah Ganji, a leading conservative journalist, called it a “common intersection” with U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in rejecting........

© Foreign Policy