THE ECONOMIST
Middle East & Africa | A jungle of power
Which Iran is America dealing with?
With talks set to resume, rivalries in the Iranian leadership could stymie a truce
THE PAST couple of days in the Middle East have been characterised by the now-familiar whiplash. On April 17th Donald Trump announced the Strait of Hormuz had opened to traffic. Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, confirmed as much. The same day outlets linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) criticised Mr Araghchi for failing to mention the conditions of the opening. The next day a military spokesman said the strait was closed again; several vessels came under fire as they tried to sail through. Mr Trump mocked the move to re-block the passage, reminding the world that America’s own blockade already ensured it remained closed to Iranian ships. Yet on April 19th he said an American delegation would return to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, for more talks with the Iranians, and repeated threats to bomb Iran’s civilian infrastructure unless negotiations succeeded.
Mr Trump’s flip-flopping is no longer surprising. Yet the conflicting messages coming out of Iran are a sign of something significant: a power struggle is under way in the Islamic Republic, which is without a present and absolute supreme leader for only the second time in its 47-year history. One observer likens the situation to “a jungle of power”, resembling the first chaotic months during Iran’s revolution in 1979. For the American delegation to Islamabad, that raises the question of who, exactly, they will be talking to.
The first set of talks in Islamabad, held on April 11th and 12th, provided a sense of Iran’s internal tensions. Iranian delegations dispatched for talks with America are usually lean, disciplined and tightly briefed. The Islamabad one was anything but: it was composed of some 80 Iranians, roughly 30 of whom were billed as decision-makers. They ranged from Majid Takht-Ravanchi, a seasoned diplomat who helped fine-tune a nuclear deal with the Obama administration in 2015, to Mahmoud Nabavian, a firebrand who derides America as “a vicious yellow dog” and sneers that any deal would be capitulation. Their arguments were so ferocious that Pakistani mediators are reported to have spent as much time refereeing among the Iranians as engaging the Americans. When tempers frayed, the hosts called a pause.
One cause of the tensions is the existence of a vacuum at the top. Seven weeks after an American-Israeli air strike killed Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader for 37 years, his successors have failed to find a date for his funeral. His son and designated successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, is thought to be either incapacitated or too weak to impose authority. Israel’s wars and assassinations have also thinned the senior ranks of army loyalists. Their replacements seem reluctant to surrender the autonomy they achieved during the war, when Iran decentralised its command-and-control to survive the combined American and Israeli attacks.
Since a ceasefire was declared on April 8th, the regime’s wartime cohesion has begun to fray. Formally, authority rests with the Supreme National Security Council, comprising the president, the parliamentary speaker and the heads of the security services. Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker, has been designated as chief negotiator, with Mr Araghchi as his lieutenant. But their readiness to negotiate has provoked a backlash, particularly from the IRGC, the 190,000-strong force that defends the Islamic Republic. To outsiders, that divide has been visible in contradictory pronouncements over the status of the Strait of Hormuz in the past couple of days.
Inside Iran, signs of swelling military assertiveness are plentiful. Pro-regime crowds—mobilised nightly by networks tied to the IRGC—have taken to denouncing Mr Araghchi and Mr Ghalibaf by name. Military communiqués delivered by men in fatigues appear to have replaced clerical sermons. Even puritanical dress codes seem to be slipping: at a recent rally an unveiled woman led chants, breaching the four-decade taboo on women singing solo in front of men. In a further sign of a military control, outlets linked to the Guards have floated the idea of delaying municipal elections that are scheduled for May 1st.
Some argue that the cacophony is tactical—a way to extract concessions by projecting hardline opposition. After all, the fissures within Iran are as old as the revolution. From the outset, its leaders have disagreed on whether to confront America or accommodate it. Yet the war appears to be hardening a new faultline between nationalists who are guided by realpolitik and state interest, and Islamists who are anchored in revolutionary ideology.
Material interests muddy matters further. Over the years a class of generals-turned-sanction-busters has emerged: its members are thought to benefit handsomely from operations to circumvent American sanctions on the economy. Networks tied to Mojtaba Khamenei and Mr Ghalibaf are thought to control foreign-property portfolios and have attracted media scrutiny. With Khamenei senior gone, previously sidelined figures have re-emerged. Each brings different allies, agendas and claims on power.
Each group has a different view on the most important sticking-points in the talks, including the nuclear programme, control of Gulf waters and the role of Iran’s regional proxies. Nationalists would trade proxy networks for sanctions relief; Islamists see them as the spine of “resistance”. For the nationalists, nuclear brinkmanship invites attack; the Islamists follow North Korea’s model and look to developing a bomb for the sake of deterrence. Control of the Strait of Hormuz, to pragmatists, is leverage for a broader security pact with Arab Gulf states; to ideologues, its appeal would be as a lucrative toll-booth under Iran’s control.
On April 15th Asim Munir, Pakistan’s army chief, visited Tehran, seeking common ground between the different groups. The need to fix what the regime claims is some $270bn-worth of damage from the war may help concentrate minds. But Iran has yet to say whether it will return to talks in Islamabad, despite Mr Trump’s announcement that America would. Even if it does, the deep divisions within the Iranian delegation mean both that it will be hard to reach a deal, and that any agreement with America could quickly unravel. ■
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