More than four decades ago, after months of setbacks in the war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, thousands of young Iranian troops launched a surprise offensive that turned the tide.
But rather than consolidate victory, the then-supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, wanted more: To topple the Iraqi dictator, who was drawing increasing support from Washington, and demonstrate to future enemies that war with Iran will exact a heavy cost.
The Iraq conflict was pivotal moment in shaping the modern Iranian state. Khomeini’s decision turned it into a six-year war of attrition that killed hundreds of thousands, one of the bloodiest conflicts in the region’s modern history. And now, years on, the question of whether to press on or cut a deal is once again facing Iran.
The revolutionaries who led the offensive dominate the seats of power in Tehran. To them, the current US-Israeli war, like the conflict with Iraq, was an imposed war whose outcome would not be determined by which side was most powerful – but which one would endure. On the other side, a more moderate camp senses a chance to consolidate Iran’s gains in talks that have made little progress.
After six months of war, the deadlock has left the Islamic Republic bitterly divided, while its ultimate arbiter, Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, remains in hiding.
Tehran’s competing politicians maintain publicly that Iran has emerged triumphant in the war.
Yet, a deep ideological schism remains over what victory for the Islamic Republic should look like.
On one side stand pragmatists and technocrats led by President Masoud Pezeshkian, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
They back a conclusive agreement, pointing to a war-battered economy, an exhausting US naval blockade and damage to the nation’s infrastructure.
USS Abraham Lincoln conducts US blockade operations related to the Strait of Hormuz on April 16 in the Arabian Sea.
US Navy/Getty Images
They have publicly warned that the window to settle the conflict from a position of strength is closing. They speak for Iranians who believe that ending the 47-year conflict with Washington is the surest way to ease the country’s domestic crises and keep the Islamic Republic alive by breaking its global isolation.
“The war must end at some point,” Pezeshkian said this month. “It would be better to end it today, while we are in a position of strength and dignity, and the entire world acknowledges our victory.”
On the other side stand hardline conservatives. Their ideology centers around a distrust of a Washington they see as hell-bent on destroying the Islamic Republic. For more than half a century they’ve warned against US intentions, and now they stand vindicated against their moderate opponents by Trump’s war.
They also accuse sitting officials of being “Western-oriented” and of trying to influence public opinion toward a deal by exaggerating domestic issues.
“They see the US as a deeply untrustworthy actor… and (have) been burnt so many times by Trump himself that they think that this is exactly what will happen again,” Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa program at London’s Chatham House think tank told CNN.
“In their minds, by not losing (the war), they’ve won, and they’re not just trying to win out with a better deal from Washington, but they’re looking for internal longevity in their competition with their opponents.”
They see Pezeshkian as a weak president who took office by chance after his hardline predecessor died in a helicopter crash. And his signature beside Trump’s on the June ceasefire agreement has ostracized him further, empowering their campaign to blame him for the shattered economy and the failed deal with Washington.
People walk past shops and browse for goods at the Grand Bazaar in Tehran on August 24, 2026. Oil prices fell on August 24 as investors braced for details of a US plan to isolate the Iranian economy that President Donald Trump billed as the “most crushing” financial operation ever against Tehran.
AFP/Getty Images
So deep are the divisions that hardliners have accused officials of deliberately mismanaging the economic crisis to pressure an exhausted public into accepting a deal. Some allege that the government has engineered fuel shortages to make an agreement unavoidable, others go further, accusing moderates of staging a coup.
“Economically, are we really in a dead end, or are you just projecting a dead end?” asked hardline lawmaker Mohammad-Manan Raisi. “It has all been blamed on the war, while it is not all related to the war.”
The hardliners point to failed past deals with the US, including a nuclear agreement signed in 2015 with the Obama administration that Trump later tore up, and they cite the two times that the US attacked the Islamic Republic amid negotiations.
This camp wagers on the Islamic Republic’s endurance, and claim that a policy of confrontation supported by armed regional proxies, missiles, drones and Shia religious belief has guarded the country more effectively than the diplomacy championed by the “Western-oriented” politicians.
“Hardliners concluded they will achieve no deal with Trump and perhaps they’re now just living in the war between the wars,” Vakil said. “They think that they can wear Trump down and they can play for time to weaken him by extending economic pain.”
Diesel and gas prices are displayed at a Allsup’s gas station on August 13, 2026 in Nortrees, Texas. US President JD Vance said that top US priority was no long Iran’s nuclear program but to bring gasoline prices down.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
A hardline lawmaker described those advocating for a deal with the US as standing against former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – killed in US-Israeli strikes at the beginning of the war.
“They want to prepare public opinion to accept an agreement and a humiliating peace,” Kamran Ghazanfari told parliament on Thursday, referring to those in favor of diplomacy with the US.
“Yet the enemy has repeatedly shown that no matter how many concessions we make to it, no matter how much we retreat before it, it will never be satisfied and will continue to demand other things from us, and it will settle for nothing less than our complete surrender.”
As Iran’s pragmatists play a high-stakes poker game with Washington, hardliners’ warnings against a deal with the US have gained force amid an erratic strategy from Trump’s and uncertainty about his commitment to a potential agreement.
“Trump is not helping. He says he wants to make Iran great again then threatens Iran in the next tweet, and that fans the flame of paranoia within the Iranian system,” Vakil said.
An American flag is reflected off bulletproof glass as U.S. President Donald Trump watches the end of the NTT INDYCAR Series on August 23 in Washington, DC.
Mike Kropf/Getty Images
The conservatives, who have elements controlling newspapers, state broadcasters, protesters on the street and followers in the military, believe Trump is using diplomacy to prepare for another military campaign and that “every time they go down the road of diplomacy” with Trump he “betrayed them,” she added.
Mojtaba Khamenei has remained quiet amid the divide. It appears that he understands that choosing a side on negotiations with an unreliable Trump could harm his office just as he is working to secure legitimacy.
On Friday, he praised the government’s performance under pressure but urged officials to address the country’s weaknesses without dwelling on them publicly, warning that doing so could embolden Iran’s enemies and demoralize its allies.
With no one to rein them in, hardliners are pressing ahead with their campaign against a deal.
“Our martyred Imam (Ali Khamenei) warned them dozens of times – how do they not understand?” said Ghazanfari about his domestic opponents. “They speak in a way that reeks of nothing but capitulation and surrender.”
Additional reporting by Aida Karimi
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