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The Iranian regime’s internal disputes are no longer confined to familiar factional sniping. They are spreading across the institutions that matter most to the survival of the ruling system: the intelligence apparatus, state broadcasting, the nuclear and war files, and the question of who ultimately controls negotiations with Washington.
What emerges from the regime’s own newspapers is a ruling establishment under pressure from war, economic deterioration and external isolation, with rival factions increasingly maneuvering to control whatever political space remains.
The latest dispute over the Intelligence Ministry is especially revealing.
For nearly eight months, the ministry has been run by an acting minister after Esmail Khatib was killed during the war. Arman-e Melli reports that the regime’s president Masoud Pezeshkian has delayed naming a replacement because his preferred candidate reportedly lacks sufficient support in parliament and among other centers of power.
The dispute has now escalated into an attempt to rewrite the rules themselves.
Parliament is considering abolishing the requirement that the intelligence minister be a cleric qualified in Islamic jurisprudence. Under one proposal, two new bodies—an Intelligence Protection Organization and an ideological-political organization—would be created inside the ministry, with their chiefs appointed directly by the Supreme Leader.
Mojtaba Khamenei calls Iran the world’s “fourth superpower”—even No. 1 by “divine calculations.” Yet #IranProtests persist across the country, the rial is at record lows, inflation is called a security threat, critics are jailed, social restrictions tighten, factional battles…
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) September 29, 2026
The issue is therefore not administrative reform. It is a struggle over who controls one of the regime’s principal instruments of repression.
Even one pro-regime commentator quoted by Arman-e Melli acknowledged that the next minister cannot simply belong to either parliament or the government, but must operate “within the framework of the ruling establishment,” with the Supreme Leader’s view remaining decisive.
A Parallel Battle Over Negotiations
The same fragmentation is visible in the regime’s handling of the war and negotiations with the United States.
Jahan-e Sanat describes an increasingly public rivalry between Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei over the diplomatic track.
Rezaei says no negotiations should begin unless Washington first accepts Tehran’s seven conditions, while Ghalibaf continues to advocate using China and other intermediaries to escape the dangerous “neither war nor peace” situation.
"At a time when Mojtaba #Khamenei and the upper echelons of Iran’s ruling establishment are urging regime insiders to avoid public feuding, rival factions are doing precisely the opposite," writes @MehdiOghbai.https://t.co/8mLnu5CPU6
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) September 16, 2026
The institutional arrangement itself borders on paralysis. According to the report, Ghalibaf still formally leads the negotiating team, while Rezaei, as security council secretary, can effectively determine whether negotiations take place at all.
Behind them stand competing factions.
Hardline outlets such as Fars and Raja News have embraced Rezaei’s growing role while blaming Ghalibaf for the previous Islamabad ceasefire and negotiations. Hardliners are openly trying to alter the balance inside the negotiating apparatus in favor of a more confrontational line.
Paydari Front figure Mahmoud Nabavian has gone further, demanding changes to the negotiating team and attacking those supposedly trying to provide Trump with an “exit window.” The message is directed not only against rival camp figures but increasingly against Ghalibaf himself.
Kayhan Declares Negotiation a Form of Surrender
The hardline camp is making little effort to conceal the ideological stakes.
Kayhan, the newspaper associated with the Supreme Leader’s office, has attacked advocates of negotiations as “profiteers of compromise,” accusing them of exploiting calls to end the “no war, no peace” situation.
🚨REVEALED: Mojtaba Khamenei appointed by only two-thirds of Iran’s Assembly of Experts
Assembly member Rajabi revealed in an interview that nearly one-third of the members were absent, and the session only just met the required two-thirds quorum.
The entire process was rushed… pic.twitter.com/TTE7L7Mv4i
— Ehsan Eghbal Eslami (@Ehsaneghbale) March 14, 2026
Its prescription is explicit: peace will not come through negotiations with Washington, but through “internal power,” preserving battlefield gains and breaking the siege through domestic capabilities.
A separate Kayhan article denounces regional mediation efforts by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Türkiye and others as a façade, arguing that these governments remain strategically aligned with Washington and are seeking diplomacy primarily because they fear Iranian retaliation against their infrastructure.
In other words, one faction sees mediation as an escape route from an unsustainable confrontation. Another sees the same diplomacy as weakness.
Even State Television Has Become a Battlefield
The conflict has also spilled into the regime’s propaganda apparatus.
State media reports show the confrontation between Pezeshkian’s government and state broadcaster chief Peyman Jebelli as evidence that IRIB has become a factional fortress rather than merely a propaganda arm of the state.
When Mojtaba Khamenei forbids the "#IranWar or negotiation” binary, both camps defy him within days. The new Leader’s word is no longer final. The pillar that once capped factional war is fracturing.
Analysis by @MehdiOghbaihttps://t.co/l4x1BQDA5V— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) September 1, 2026
Pezeshkian reportedly told Jebelli in September that he no longer watches state television because it makes him angry, adding that if even someone prepared to devote his life to the system feels that way, officials should imagine how ordinary people regard it.
The dispute matters because Jebelli is appointed directly from above and therefore enjoys an institutional base independent of the government. The result is a state broadcaster increasingly used to pressure rival factions from within the same ruling establishment.
The Fight Is About Survival
None of these disputes is happening in a political vacuum.
The same regime faces war, severe economic pressure, international isolation and a society whose tolerance has already been tested by repeated uprisings.
Under those conditions, control over intelligence, negotiations and propaganda becomes inseparable from the question of survival.
NCRI Editorial: Iran and #Mojtaba_Khamenei: Succession Without Legitimacyhttps://t.co/NPnYW3WEPT
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) March 9, 2026
Each faction is trying to protect itself against the possibility of failure: if negotiations collapse, someone must be blamed; if concessions are made, someone must own the retreat; if repression intensifies, someone must control the security apparatus.
What the regime once described as “unity” increasingly resembles a temporary truce among competing power centers.
The question is no longer whether factions disagree.
It is whether a ruling system under simultaneous military, economic and social pressure still possesses an authority strong enough to force them back into line.