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On December 16, 2025, Ali Akbar Velayati—Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s longtime senior adviser on international affairs—held a highly publicized meeting with Ali Larijani, the newly installed secretary of the regime’s Supreme National Security Council. State media described it as a working session on “regional issues” and “international developments,” a carefully staged signal that key establishment figures remain aligned amid widening elite infighting.
Following the meeting and in a post on X that has been repeatedly referenced by Iranian outlets in the context of elite messaging, Velayati argued that “obsolete methods” will not meet the demands of a “post-war society,” and that “national cohesion” should translate into governance changes that are “tangible” to citizens.
Velayati’s post-meeting messaging should be read as managed signaling from the top, not dissent: by having a senior adviser talk about “obsolete methods,” “national unity,” and the need for “tangible” public satisfaction, the system can hint at course-correction without forcing Ali Khamenei to publicly acknowledge backpedaling. In practice, this kind of surrogate rhetoric helps Khamenei distance himself from potential fallout—if the message calms tensions it can later be embraced as “the Leader’s line,” and if it fails or provokes hardliner backlash the cost is borne by intermediaries—while simultaneously creating the impression of imminent change to buy time amid mounting socio-economic pressure and rising infighting within the regime’s inner circle, including parliamentary threats to censure or impeach ministers over surging prices.
#Iran’s Power Struggle Widens as Crises Overwhelm the Systemhttps://t.co/pQgDY3BYUi
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) December 4, 2025
Economic Pressure Is Driving Ruling-clique Blame-Shifting
Iran’s economic freefall is now being weaponized as a ruling-clique blame game: the tightly vetted Majlis—shaped by Guardian Council disqualifications and dominated by extremist factions after record-low participation—has escalated threats to censure or remove ministers, with Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf warning that lawmakers could move against the cabinet if it is not reshuffled to tackle inflation and the cost-of-living crisis.
This pressure is not hypothetical: parliament already impeached Economy Minister Abdolnaser Hemmati in March 2025 amid currency and price shocks, and recent reporting suggests the threat environment is intensifying as hardship deepens—turning economic governance into a factional battleground rather than problem-solving.
The contradiction is stark because Khamenei publicly urged support for Masoud Pezeshkian on November 27, 2025—framing his government as carrying a “heavy burden”—yet within weeks the leader-aligned system was undermining that same administration through coordinated parliamentary escalation, a sign that the center’s ability to impose discipline across rival power networks is slipping.
#Iranian state-affiliated media on Monday openly reflected a sharpening internal confrontation between Masoud Pezeshkian’s government and the parliament, as soaring prices, currency shocks, and deepening poverty are turned into instruments of factional warfare inside the ruling…
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) December 22, 2025
Rouhani and Zarif Move In
As the regime’s internal cohesion is tested, figures associated with the revisionist wing are visibly re-entering the arena.
The regime’s former President Hassan Rouhani has resumed periodic meetings with members of his previous administration, publicly urging them to help the current government achieve at least “one important” result so that people “feel” a major change ahead—an unmistakable intervention into today’s governance debate.
Extremist and security-adjacent media have responded with open hostility. Coverage republishing Kayhan’s attacks portrays Rouhani as a negative lesson rather than a model, and other outlets have mocked him for attempting to rebrand his record.
At the same time, former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has escalated his own bid to shape the debate—this time via Western-facing diplomacy discourse. In a recent Foreign Affairs article, Zarif argues for a pathway to break the U.S.–Iran nuclear deadlock and frames the broader confrontation as a cycle that can be unwound through an updated diplomatic formula.
The backlash from media close to Khamenei has been blistering. IRGC’s Javan Newspaper framed Zarif’s intervention as effectively instructing Western policymakers and labeled the broader line associated with Rouhani-era diplomacy as “an obvious betrayal.”
Separate criticism of Zarif by Kayhan has used the same vocabulary: treating the “West-oriented” approach as either ruinous folly or betrayal, and insisting that negotiation itself was a strategic mistake.
#Iranian Regime’s Crisis Deepens as Infighting Overshadows Governance Failureshttps://t.co/n4KehhfYgk
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) December 1, 2025
What This Signals
Khamenei’s dilemma is the cumulative result of strategic failure across the entire region combined with economic collapse at home. The regime has suffered major setbacks throughout the region: the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria stripped the regime of its central Arab state ally; Iranian-aligned militias have been weakened across Iraq under political and security pressure; the Houthis have lost strategic momentum amid sustained military blows; and Hezbollah—long marketed as the regime’s most successful proxy—is now operating under unprecedented constraints in Lebanon.
These regional reversals have coincided with an economic meltdown driven by sanctions, corruption, and structural mismanagement, fueling social unrest and accelerating infighting at the top of the system.
Khamenei is now attempting to postpone a decisive reckoning: either openly back down, risking an unprecedented fracture of his ideological base and security apparatus—thereby emboldening a society he has ruled through repression—or double down on the same failed roadmap, accepting the gradual intensification of economic collapse, elite warfare, and popular anger that is already pushing the clerical dictatorship toward a far more dangerous phase.