REUTERS — Iran’s hierarchy is showing signs of fracturing over a war with the US and Israel that its leaders see as existential, with angry divisions between hardliners and more pragmatic factions laid bare by a row over Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s promise not to strike Gulf states.

Fissures within Iran’s ruling elite were long suppressed under the iron rule of the late supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but his killing at the beginning of the US-Israeli airstrike campaign a week ago has allowed them to spill out into the open as the strikes pile pressure on Tehran.

The unrelenting bombardment mortally imperils the Islamic Republic and has prompted its fiercest acolytes, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, to seize a bigger role in strategy despite a decapitation campaign that has killed many top commanders.

Sources close to Iran’s leadership, speaking from inside the country, told Reuters the strains were starting to show among leading figures still alive after a series of killings in the US-Israeli strikes. They spoke anonymously due to the sensitivity of the matter.

In a sign of the growing stresses to the system, clerics are accelerating the appointment of a new supreme leader with a decision possible on Sunday, though it is far from clear if Khamenei’s successor will wield enough authority to stamp out factional disputes.

While his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, is seen as a frontrunner backed by the Guards and his father’s powerful office, he is untested, junior to most of Iran’s senior ayatollahs, and has alienated moderates within the system. US President Donald Trump, who has demanded to be involved in the selection of Iran’s next leader, has called him “unacceptable.”

Other potential candidates could struggle to uphold the unquestioning obedience of the Guards required to maintain discipline........

© The Times of Israel