Attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz led by hardliners 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 New York Times revealed on Sunday, citing regime insiders.
It said 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 traveled to neighboring Iraq for part of a weeklong funeral spectacle for Iran’s slain supreme leader.
Iranian forces had opened fire on three commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, setting ablaze a Qatari LNG tanker and damaging other vessels.
Outraged, Pezeshkian phoned General Ahmad Vahidi, the commander in chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, 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 authorized nor had advance knowledge of the strike, the five officials said.
The nation’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.
Pezeshkian immediately returned to Tehran. By the next morning, the US retaliated with strikes on Iran and the two countries were back at war.
The hard-liners succeeded in part because the only figure with the authority to resolve such disputes — the new supreme leader, 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, the US had retaliated with airstrikes on Iran. The two countries were back at war.
Senior Iranian officials and a Guards 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 Guards, to lead the council, as he was thought to have the skill to mediate among political factions.
But the newspaper said divisions persisted and the hardliners who have committed Iran to escalation are in an even stronger position.
The New York Times account of the inner deliberations of Iran’s leadership is based on interviews with eight Iranian officials, three members of the Revolutionary Guards, four former officials and a review of dozens of speeches and comments by government officials and military generals from June to September published in the Iranian press and social media. The officials interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss delicate issues of national security.
Three Iranian officials said inquiries by the government and security forces traced the decision to strike the three commercial ships in July to the cleric Hossein Taeb, an influential spymaster who had opposed the peace deal with the United States from the outset.
Taeb had been telling the new supreme leader that Iran had made a mistake in ending the war and agreeing to the deal, they said.
Taeb, in a recent speech to military families, said that he was not opposed to talks but that “negotiations that ignore the rights of our people and concede to the excessive demands of the enemy have no place in Iran’s politics.”
Khamenei recently appointed Taeb as the head of the Basij militia, which is responsible for quelling domestic dissent. He had previously served for more than 20 years as chief for the Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence agency before the previous supreme leader ousted him in 2022 over failures such as Israeli infiltration of his rank and file, and a foiled plot in Türkiye.
Taeb re-emerged after that supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed at the start of the war, and he played a key role in the selection of the son Mojtaba as the successor to his father, officials said at the time.
“The attack on the ships was orchestrated with the goal to blow up the memorandum of understanding with Trump and to kill the prospects of any future negotiations and deal,” Alireza Namvar Haghighi, an Iran expert and former official who still has close contacts in the government, said in an interview from Canada.
When Pezeshkian demanded to know who had struck the three ships, he was told that commanders in the field had acted on their own, in line with an order empowering them to attack any ship violating Iran’s control of the Strait without waiting for approval from central command, according to the officials with knowledge of these discussions.
In one sign of the dispute, the Guards’ Khatam al-Anbiya headquarters never issued a statement claiming responsibility for the July 7 attack, as has been routine in other attacks before and since.
Iranian officials relayed this same account to the United States and some of its regional allies in the immediate hours after the attacks, blaming rogue operators, according to US officials who briefed reporters at the time and the three Iranian officials.
On the streets and on state television in Iran, meanwhile, the hardliners openly attacked the negotiating team and its peace deal, and at nightly rallies, crowds chanted for a return to war.
The Iranian government has devised an official narrative deflecting blame for the collapse of the agreement, saying Washington violated it first by not stopping Israel’s attacks on the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon, by withholding Iran’s frozen assets and by sneaking ships through a portion of the Strait of Hormuz not controlled by Iran. But few inside Iran’s political circles are convinced by this version, including Pezeshkian himself, five officials said.
Pezeshkian said publicly last month that every agreement sees violations and that they should be addressed through talks, not confrontation.
War Plan
For weeks, the political leaders and generals running Iran have debated two ways to break the stalemate with the United States, officials said.
Under one approach, Iran could seek to return to negotiations. Under the other, it would escalate attacks on American targets, aiming to strike naval vessels, kill American troops and raise global oil prices.
Both would aim to end the US naval blockade on Iran’s southern ports, which have paralyzed trade and brought oil sales down to zero, according to officials.
Iran’s economy is deteriorating, with the currency plunging daily, inflation soaring and the government facing a cash deficit.
Hardline generals, including Brigadier General Seyyed Majid Mousavi, who commands the Guards’ Aerospace Force, pressed for confrontation, officials and two Guards members said.
Pezeshkian and Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who is also the top negotiator with the United States, were among the officials who warned that the war plan risked dragging the country into an abyss, with even fiercer US airstrikes and more crippling economic pressure.
But by last Saturday, the hardline faction had gained the upper hand. “The war between Iran and the United States,” said Mahdi Mohammadi, the top adviser to General Ghalibaf, “has entered the phase of escalation.”
