A bitter power struggle is unfolding at the highest levels of Iran’s regime, as hardline security figures press for a wider confrontation with the United States while uncertainty deepens over who is truly in control amid the public absence of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei.
A sweeping New York Times investigation published Sunday describes how those tensions spilled into the open after a hardline faction allegedly ordered attacks on three commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz in July. The operation was reportedly carried out without the knowledge of President Masoud Pezeshkian, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Gen. Ahmad Vahidi or Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, helping to unravel a U.S.-Iran agreement reached only weeks earlier.
The incident triggered furious confrontations, threats of resignation and accusations of betrayal and treason among senior Iranian officials. It also exposed a deeper crisis of authority: Pezeshkian has reportedly questioned whether messages attributed to Khamenei are genuine. The supreme leader has not appeared in public since sustaining serious injuries during the opening U.S.-Israeli strikes in February.
The crisis began when Iranian forces attacked three commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz overnight on July 6-7, including a Qatari liquefied natural gas tanker. At the time, Pezeshkian was in neighboring Iraq attending mourning ceremonies for Khamenei’s father and predecessor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the initial strikes of the conflict on February 28.
According to five Iranian officials and two IRGC members cited by the newspaper, an angry Pezeshkian called Vahidi to demand an explanation. Vahidi reportedly said he had not authorized the attack and was unaware of it before it happened. The Supreme National Security Council, officials said, had also not been informed.
The United States launched strikes the next morning, prompting a renewed exchange of fire and effectively ending the June memorandum of understanding, which had offered a possible route toward halting the hostilities.
The fallout produced some of the most severe infighting among Iran’s leaders since the conflict began. Two senior generals reportedly threatened to resign as rival camps accused one another of betrayal and treason. The crisis also contributed to a restructuring of the Supreme National Security Council and the appointment of veteran politician and former IRGC commander Gen. Mohsen Rezaei as its head. Rezaei was seen as someone able to mediate between the competing factions.
Investigations by Iran’s government and security agencies later attributed the decision to attack the ships to Hossein Taeb, an influential hardliner and longtime intelligence official who had opposed the agreement with Washington from the beginning, according to three Iranian officials quoted in the report.
“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 Iranian analyst with contacts inside the regime, told the newspaper.
Taeb spent more than 20 years in senior intelligence roles and previously led the IRGC’s intelligence organization. He had reportedly told Khamenei that Iran had made a mistake by ending the fighting and accepting the agreement with Washington.
“Negotiations that ignore the rights of our people and concede to the excessive demands of the enemy have no place in Iran’s politics,” Taeb recently told a gathering of military families.
Taeb’s influence is especially notable because of his ties to the Khamenei family. Ali Khamenei removed him as IRGC intelligence chief in 2022 after a series of security failures. Following the elder Khamenei’s death, however, Taeb returned to prominence and reportedly played a major role in helping secure Mojtaba Khamenei’s rise as his successor.
Khamenei subsequently appointed Taeb to command the Basij, the regime’s paramilitary force used to suppress domestic unrest, directing the veteran intelligence chief to strengthen its grassroots intelligence network as Tehran confronts mounting concern that the country’s deteriorating economy could fuel renewed protests.
Yet when Pezeshkian sought to determine who had actually authorized the July attacks, generals privately told him that Khamenei had approved them.
Pezeshkian reportedly demanded proof.
The confrontation strikes at the heart of the uncertainty surrounding Khamenei, who was wounded in the February 28 strikes that killed his father and much of Iran’s senior leadership and has not made an authenticated public appearance or released audio or video since becoming supreme leader.
His absence has become increasingly conspicuous. Khamenei did not attend his father’s elaborate funeral in July even as three of his brothers appeared publicly, and Pezeshkian acknowledged in August that communicating with the supreme leader was “very difficult.”
President Donald Trump later said he believed Khamenei was alive but had been “very seriously wounded,” describing extensive injuries to the left side of his body.
“I don’t think he’s dead. He was very seriously wounded. The left side of his body, the arm, the leg, the whole thing,” Trump said in an August interview with Glenn Beck.
The recent report goes further, revealing that Iranian officials, including Pezeshkian, have questioned the authenticity of written statements and other communications attributed to Khamenei.
Questions also surround whether the president has actually communicated directly with the supreme leader.
Pezeshkian said in May that he had met with Khamenei, but two Iranian officials and a former senior official described an extraordinary encounter in which the president was transported in an ambulance with tinted windows and connected by secure video to a man who identified himself as an intermediary and purported to relay messages between the two leaders.
Pezeshkian later told an ally that he was uncertain whether he had actually communicated with Khamenei, according to the report.
Last month, Pezeshkian claimed he received permission for another meeting with Khamenei that lasted roughly seven hours, during which they discussed sanctions, unemployment, the cost of living, national unity, and other issues facing Iran. He offered no details about the circumstances of the purported meeting or what Khamenei told him.
The uncertainty over who is exercising Khamenei’s authority comes as rival factions inside Tehran battle over whether to seek an agreement with Washington or dramatically escalate the conflict in hopes of forcing the United States to end its naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
Hardline commanders have pushed a plan to attack American targets, damage U.S. Navy vessels, inflict American casualties, and drive up global oil prices, according to the investigation. The strategy would also call on Iran-aligned groups in Yemen and Iraq to intensify attacks, including against oil infrastructure across the region, in an effort to increase the military and economic costs of the conflict.
Pezeshkian and Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf have warned that such a course could drag Iran into an “abyss,” risking further U.S. strikes while worsening the economic conditions already confronting the regime.
Pezeshkian has publicly acknowledged the need for an exit, arguing that “war has to end at some point” and that it would be better to end the conflict “today, while we are in a position of strength and dignity.”
Ghalibaf has issued an even starker warning about Iran’s ability to sustain the confrontation.
“No matter how much military power we have, if people are hungry and we do not have financial circulation and economic growth, we will not endure,” he said.
Trump, meanwhile, said Sunday that Iran “wants to make a deal so bad” and claimed Iranian officials are “calling constantly,” while insisting he would agree only to terms acceptable to Washington.
“They’ve got to make the right deal,” Trump said. “I’m not gonna make a deal that’s no good.”
For now, however, the hardline faction advocating greater confrontation appears to have gained the upper hand, according to the report.
“The war between Iran and the United States has entered the phase of escalation,” Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser to Ghalibaf, said.
