A small but influential hardline faction in Iran has intensified efforts to sabotage a potential deal with Washington, fuelling President Donald Trump’s claims of divisions within the Islamic Republic.
The group shares Trump’s view that the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers was a mistake – but for different reasons. Its positions are so hostile to the West, even by the standards of Iran’s conservative hardliners, that the regime’s efforts to appease it have so far failed.
And as the Islamic Republic’s new leaders project unity in the face of the gravest existential threat the regime has faced, the ultra-hardline group has ramped up efforts across the media, in parliament and on the streets to advocate against an agreement with the US, arguing that only by defeating Washington can Iran secure a favorable deal.
The group CNN describes is distinct from the IRGC hardliners who have been the primary obstacle throughout the war. Where the IRGC hardliners — led by Gen. Ahmad Vahidi — have resisted specific concessions on nuclear enrichment and Hormuz governance while nominally accepting negotiation as a framework, this ultra-hardline faction opposes negotiation entirely.
For them, any deal with Washington is by definition a defeat — because the US initiated the war, killed Iran’s supreme leader, bombed its nuclear facilities, and imposed a blockade. Accepting terms in that context means accepting that military force achieved what diplomacy alone could not, and that sets a precedent the ultra-hardliners consider existentially dangerous for Iran’s future.
How the Counter-Proposal Was Produced
Iran’s civilian diplomatic team — Araghchi, President Pezeshkian — has been consistently described throughout the war as more willing to negotiate than the IRGC and far more willing than the ultra-hardliner faction. The counter-proposal that emerged Sunday appears to reflect not Araghchi’s design but a compromise between factions — a document that the civilian team could not prevent being shaped by hardline domestic political requirements.
The demand for Hormuz sovereignty is the ultra-hardliner’s core demand — converting a military closure into a permanent legal claim that can never be surrendered in any deal without appearing to abandon Iranian sovereignty.
The absence of nuclear language reflects the IRGC’s refusal to allow Iran’s nuclear programme to be discussed in a document that does not first settle the war termination and Hormuz questions. Together they produced a proposal that Iran’s Foreign Ministry — reflexively — had to call “reasonable and generous,” even knowing it was neither by Washington’s metric.
What Can Still Save the Diplomatic Track
Iran’s civilian team is not finished. Araghchi’s circuit through Pakistan, Oman, Moscow and Beijing was not abandoned by Monday’s rejection. The same back-channel architecture that produced every breakthrough — Pakistan’s Munir as mediator, Oman’s Busaidi as message carrier, China’s Wang Yi as external pressure — is still operational.
The most likely outcome now is a pattern that has repeated five times in this conflict: Trump makes a furious rejection statement, Pakistan intervenes, a new proposal emerges that is slightly better than the last, and the ceasefire continues under pressure.
The “massive life support” declaration is not a death certificate. It is the latest iteration of the same cycle — and the Pakistani mediator who said “we will close this very soon” is almost certainly already on the phone to Tehran.
