Four-minute read
The clerical dictatorship enters the autumn of 2025 in visible disarray. Beneath the usual slogans of strength and defiance, Iran’s ruling elite is engaged in an open civil war of words and factions. Ministers, parliamentarians, and even state media now expose one another’s failures with a candor unseen since the 1980s. Yet despite the internal chaos, the regime’s rhetoric toward the outside world has grown even bolder—an effort to mask weakness behind defiance.
Science of the Bomb, Theater of Denial
When Mahmoud-Reza Aghamiri, head of Shahid Beheshti University and a veteran of the regime’s nuclear establishment, declared on state television that “we have the capability to build the bomb and could do it in the best way if we decide to,” he momentarily stripped the regime of one of its long-held pretenses. His remark that every nuclear scientist “must know how a bomb is made” contradicted years of official insistence on purely peaceful intent. His caveat—crediting Khamenei’s fatwa for restraint—was perfunctory.
That such a claim aired on official media underscores both hubris and insecurity. Domestically, it signals to a demoralized base that the regime is unbowed after the June Twelve-Day War and the reimposition of UN sanctions. Internationally, it is a message of desperation: a threat meant to project leverage at a time when Tehran is more isolated than ever. The louder the boast, the deeper the weakness it conceals.
#Iran Faces Deepening Power Struggles Amid @UN Sanctions “Snapback” https://t.co/7CqMVhSUWz
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) September 1, 2025
Desperate calls
Inside the system, public self-criticism has become a substitute for real change. In a televised appearance on October 14, regime’s president Masoud Pezeshkian—a loyal insider now struggling to distance himself from the dysfunction he serves—lamented that “we are imbalanced in everything—water, electricity, gas, salaries, land—everything is on the edge.”
For a sitting president to call his own government unjust is remarkable. But Pezeshkian’s lamentation was not rebellion—it was theater. He simultaneously praised the “long life and honor” of the Supreme Leader while decrying the rot within the state built around him. His tone captured the paradox of today’s Iran: a regime so divided that even its figurehead must admit failure, yet so brittle that no one dares assign blame to the man at the top.
Former president Hassan Rouhani’s sudden reappearance after months of silence exposed the vacuum around Khamenei. Rouhani, openly challenging Khamenei’s rejection of talks with Washington, denounced state television as a “machine of hatred” and declared that Iran must return to negotiations with the world, insisting that “it is wrong to say we must choose between war and surrender.” His defiance reflects not renewed confidence, but his reading of a weakened Supreme Leader—one whose authority no longer silences dissent even within the ranks of the establishment.
#Iran’s Cairo Agreement Triggers Factional Warfare and Exposes Khamenei’s Weakening Grip https://t.co/E69azy8DfH
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) September 17, 2025
Parliament in Pandemonium
The façade of unity collapsed most vividly in the Majlis (parliament), where sessions now resemble street brawls. Lawmakers shouted over one another on October 14, accusing ministers of incompetence, mismanagement, and corruption. One MP cried that “bread has turned to brick, chicken has flown away, and meat has vanished.” Others demanded the president act against “profiteers and parasites.”
The scene deteriorated into open shouting matches, with legislators accusing one another of violating procedure and lying to the public about their own salaries. Even loyalists complained that “people are angry enough already.” These are not reformist dissidents; they are regime insiders acknowledging a collapse of governance. Their fury is both genuine and performative—a preemptive disavowal of blame before the next eruption of public unrest.
From Cairo Deal to Snapback: #Iran’s Power Struggle Goes Nuclearhttps://t.co/7IEvb6hTJR
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) September 22, 2025
The FATF Battle and Fear of Exposure
Another fissure appeared over Iran’s long-delayed decision on joining the CFT (Combating the Financing of Terrorism) convention. Extremist factions warned that compliance would force Tehran to disclose the financial trails linking it to Hezbollah, the Houthis, and other proxy networks.
MP Mahmoud Nabaviyan called the agreement “a direct threat to national security,” while others accused the government of “handing intelligence to the enemy.” Opponents countered that blocking it will deepen sanctions and choke the banking system further. The debate degenerated into mutual accusations of betraying either “the revolution” or “the national interest.”
This paralysis reveals the regime’s structural dilemma: transparency would expose the covert funding of militias abroad, but secrecy ensures continued economic isolation. Either choice carries existential risk, and so the regime oscillates—loud in rhetoric, paralyzed in policy.
#Iranian Regime MPs Call for Nuclear Weapons as UN Snapback Loomshttps://t.co/bZaXOoUtzz
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) October 16, 2025
A House Divided
The newspaper Ebtekar confirmed what officials deny: that a faction within parliament seeks to impeach several ministers simultaneously to weaken or even unseat President Pezeshkian. The campaign is driven not by ideology but by factional vengeance, particularly from figures aligned with Speaker Ghalibaf and the Revolutionary Guard’s political network. Even regime media now speak of “wolves devouring one another.”
Meanwhile, older figures like Ali Akbar Nategh-Nouri openly question foundational myths, calling the 1979 takeover of the U.S. embassy a “grave mistake.” Within 24 hours, Kayhan, Khamenei’s flagship daily, denounced him for “listening to the whispers of the deviants.” Such ferocity betrays fear: when regime veterans start to doubt the revolution’s sacred moments, the ideological glue is gone.
#Iran’s Power Struggle Escalates as State Media Admits Setbacks, Snapback Tightens, and the Street Simmershttps://t.co/sxHEeUIuiK
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) October 12, 2025
The Coming Reckoning
Iran’s rulers now face converging crises: economic contraction, elite fragmentation, public anger, and international isolation. The nuclear boast, the poetic self-criticism, the televised shouting—all are symptoms of a regime collapsing under its own contradictions.
A state that cannot reconcile its factions, reform its economy, or tell the truth to its people has no path forward but repression. Yet repression has lost its deterrent power. The clerical system still speaks the language of revolution, but its institutions reek of decay. In every shout of “resistance,” one can hear the echo of fear—the fear that the next confrontation will not be abroad but in the streets of Iran itself.