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In early July, senior Iranian officials issued public calls for unity, with the regime’s Supreme Leader’s aide, Mohammad Mokhber, urging all factions to support President Masoud Pezeshkian’s government to thwart the “enemies’ disturbed dreams.”
Yet, behind this facade, the regime is consumed by a two-front crisis that has laid bare its profound dysfunction: a systematic internal assault to paralyze its own president, and a desperate propaganda campaign to mask the frailty of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. These concurrent events reveal a leadership consumed not by governance, but by vicious power struggles and existential paranoia.
The political siege on Pezeshkian has been both swift and public. Members of the rival faction have openly weaponized public suffering to undermine Pezeshkian’s administration, launching a social media campaign calling for his impeachment. Citing critical shortages with the words, “there is no electricity, no water, no medicine,” the campaign portrays the government as incompetent.
#Tehran’s War Fallout Exposes a Cornered Regime Gripped by Fear, Crackdown, and Global Isolationhttps://t.co/tE9tEIP6H5
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) July 1, 2025
On July 9, 2025, Member of Parliament Amirhossein Sabeti directly threatened the president, calling his responses to an American journalist “weak” and “shameful,” warning, “If the government’s approach to foreign policy does not change, the parliament’s treatment of the government will change.”
This internal sabotage escalated into a direct challenge to the president’s authority on foreign policy. After Pezeshkian suggested a readiness to resume negotiations with the United States, Khamenei’s representative at the Kayhan newspaper, Hossein Shariatmadari, publicly rebuked him. On July 7, 2025, Shariatmadari declared that Pezeshkian’s understanding of a religious fatwa was “flawed and unreal,” insisting that figures like Trump are subject to the edict and their “punishment is execution.” He mocked the president’s willingness to talk, asking, “When they have dropped a bomb on the negotiating table, what is the point of talking about dialogue?”
While one wing of the regime works to dismantle the president, another has been engaged in an elaborate exercise of “flattery therapy” to conceal the weakness of the Supreme Leader. Following a two-week, unexplained disappearance from public view during which official meetings were canceled, Khamenei’s reappearance on July 7, 2025, triggered a bizarrely coordinated wave of praise. President Pezeshkian posted a prayer to protect Khamenei. From Brazil, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called a picture of Khamenei the “most beautiful image” he had seen. This orchestrated display was openly acknowledged as a defensive maneuver. A cleric and member of the Expediency Council, Gholamreza Mesbahi-Moghaddam, admitted the leader’s appearance was intended to “neutralize the psychological war” and counter alleged threats to his life from the U.S. and Israel.
#Iran Regime Shaken by Ceasefire Fallout, Fear of Unrest Mountshttps://t.co/iL8tM2lRNd
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) June 30, 2025
The contradictory actions expose a system at war with itself. The state-run Sazandegi newspaper warned the impeachment campaign against Pezeshkian could “seriously damage the fragile unity of society at this critical juncture.”
Ultimately, these events are not signs of healthy political debate but symptoms of a terminal diagnosis. The regime is caught between projecting the imaginary strength of its frail leader and the very real sabotage of its own administration. The crises facing the Iranian people—lack of water, electricity, and medicine—are no longer governing priorities but have been reduced to talking points in a bitter internal war for power.
This deep-seated rot, where survival instincts have completely eclipsed any semblance of national governance, confirms that the regime is even incapable of self-preservation and is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions.