Why the US-Iran peace deal falling apart wasn’t all Trump’s fault

September 14, 2026 — 3:22pm

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Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was riding high in early July, fresh off the successful negotiation of a peace agreement with the United States, and had travelled to neighbouring Iraq for part of a weeklong funeral spectacle for Iran’s slain supreme leader.

Suddenly, he got stunning news.

Iranian forces had opened fire on three commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, setting ablaze a Qatari tanker and damaging other vessels. Iran was under siege in world opinion.

Outraged, Pezeshkian phoned General Ahmad Vahidi, the commander in chief of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard, and in a raised voice called the actions reckless and demanded answers, according to five Iranian officials and two Guards members familiar with the events.

Vahidi told the president that he had neither authorised nor had advance knowledge of the strike, the five officials said. Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, which plays a critical role in both the war and negotiations, had also been in the dark, he said.

In fact, much of the country’s leadership was unaware that a fringe hardline faction had decided to act on its own. Ultimately, those clandestine efforts derailed a push by more moderate pragmatists in Iran to reach an end to hostilities with the United States and repair their nation’s ailing economy.

The hardliners succeeded in part because the only figure with the authority to resolve such disputes — the new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei — has been a phantom since taking office in March. He has not been seen, and his voice has not been heard. And the authenticity of written statements and messages attributed to Khamenei has been questioned, including by Pezeshkian, according to three Iranian officials.

Pezeshkian immediately returned to Tehran. By the next morning, even as the funeral ceremonies were still under way, the US had retaliated with airstrikes on Iran. The two countries were back at war.

Senior Iranian officials and a Revolutionary Guard member said in interviews that what followed were some of the most volatile political confrontations within Iran’s leadership in memory. Officials engaged in shouting matches. Two senior generals threatened to resign. Accusations of treason and betrayal flew.

The reverberations, officials said, contributed to a shake-up at the National Security Council and the supreme leader’s appointment of General Mohsen Rezaei, a seasoned politician and former commander in chief of the Guard, to lead the council, as he was thought to have the skill to mediate among political factions.

But divisions persist, and the hardliners who have committed Iran to escalation are in an even stronger position. Last........

© The Age