Iran has insisted that the United States must end its blockade of Iranian ports before talks can resume, and many analysts say the leadership is more cohesive than is being portrayed. “I think that’s a serious misreading of the Iranian leadership,” Mehrat Kamrava, a professor of government at Georgetown University Qatar, told CNN’s Becky Anderson. “The leadership has been quite cohesive, and we’ve seen this in the conduct of the war and the negotiation.” Governance in Iran has become far more complicated since the United States and Israel eliminated most of the regime’s top military and political leaders, including Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

A group of once-competing officials from across the Islamic Republic’s political spectrum is now deciding the country’s future under the threat of an existential war, and amid the conspicuous absence of the ultimate decision-maker, Mojtaba Khamenei, who succeeded his late father as the new supreme leader. These officials are also forced to balance their vision for the future of Iran with domestic pressure from hard-line groups refusing to declare defeat and external pressure from Trump’s push to declare victory. Yet despite their political differences, this group of officials appears determined to publicly project cohesion, even if they diverge on how to navigate the war and conduct diplomacy with the US, according to experts.

“Different factions of Iranian leadership are more aligned now than before the war,” Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told CNN. “Because this is a much smaller circle … this circle is more united about the strategy they use in the war” compared to previous restrictions under Ali Khamenei. People walk past an anti-US mural on a building in Tehran on Thursday.

Majid-Asgaripour/WANA/Reuters Demonstrating unity Amid feverish speculation over whether Iran would attend talks this week, Tehran maintained a consistent public stance that its negotiators would not participate. It accused Washington of violating the ceasefire and lacking “seriousness in pursuing a diplomatic solution.” Even before the war, the Islamic Republic under Ali Khamenei maintained a clear list of “red lines” — including the right to enrich uranium, continued missile development and supporting its proxy groups — demands it has carried into the current negotiations with the Trump administration.

Iran’s political leadership has been at pains to dispel reports of infighting and to project a unified approach to the country’s military objectives and negotiating strategy. “Talk of divisions among senior officials is a tired political and propaganda ploy by Iran’s adversaries,” Mehdi Tabatabai, the Iranian president’s deputy spokesman, wrote Wednesday on X. “Unity and consensus between the battlefield, the public, and diplomats at this time have been exceptional and noteworthy.” The regime has elevated one official to embody that unity.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the country’s long-serving parliament speaker and former Revolutionary Guard commander, has led the first round of negotiations with the US in Islamabad and is now viewed as one of the main figures representing the Islamic Republic. Yet, even when Ghalibaf landed in Islamabad for the first round of talks, he was accompanied by an unprecedented team of Iranian officials representing a diverse political spectrum in what appeared to be a deliberate attempt to showcase cohesion. “Are there differences?

Of course there are,” Parsi said. But to assess that the reason both sides can’t strike a deal is not because of Trump’s conflicting messaging but rather due to Iranian fractured leadership is “detached from reality,” he said. Over the weekend, the US and Iran appeared to be closing in on a deal to end the seven-week war, CNN reported.

Trump then began posting about ongoing talks on social media and speaking to several reporters by phone Friday morning as Pakistani intermediaries updated him on ongoing talks with Iranian officials in Tehran. Some Trump officials privately acknowledged to CNN that the president’s public commentary has been detrimental to talks, noting the sensitivity of the negotiations and the Iranians’ deep mistrust of the US. People wave national flags and hold portraits of Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, as they march in support of the Iranian armed forces in central Tehran on March 25. AFP/Getty Images Wartime structures Facing the threat of annihilation, Iran’s regime has dismantled its traditional system of rival power centers that competed for alm