CAIRO (AP) — By escalating attacks against US bases and its allies over the past week, Iran’s leaders showed considerable unity over their war strategy: hanging tough, determined to show Iran can endure more than America and its allies can.

But within the leadership, there are sharp differences over what the endgame should be.

On one side, the ultra-hardliners who oppose any negotiations with the United States are pressing for total victory in the war. Known as the “Paydari” movement – Persian for “stability” – they are hard-core ideologues who want to enforce the Islamic Republic’s control over society.

On the other, those who support President Masoud Pezeshkian and powerful parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf — who doubles as Iran’s chief negotiator — see military pressure as a way to win a negotiated deal with the United States. This camp is also spurred by concern over the economic toll Iran is suffering from the war and the need to adapt to social change in the country.

“Negotiation is a political tool and a complement to military action to force the enemy to a point of compulsion and extract real concessions,” an adviser to Ghalibaf, Mahdi Mohammadi, wrote on his Telegram channel Thursday.

The unusually open rivalry within the theocracy’s leadership points to a struggle for control over Iran’s postwar future. A huge question mark is where the new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, stands. Reportedly injured in the strike that killed his father in the opening minutes of the war on Feb. 28, Khamenei remains in hiding, and both sides have claimed his support.

In a boost for Ghalibaf and Pezeshkian, the ceasefire deal reached with the US in April received strong backing in Iran’s top leadership body, the Supreme National Security Council. Twelve of its 13 members approved it, including senior figures in the Revolutionary Guard and the military.

The lone vote against the deal is widely believed to have come from Saeed Jalili, the most prominent figure in the Paydari movement.

But the ceasefire crumbled as the two sides traded strikes and as Iran pressed for control over passage through the Strait of Hormuz which before the war carried a fifth of the world’s traded oil and gas. Iran was also frustrated that financial promises under the deal – including the release of billions of frozen assets – didn’t materialize, and the American blockade was back in place.

With US........

© The Times of Israel