During Operation Epic Fury, the Islamic Republic encouraged its supporters to gather on streets at night to show strength and to control the public spaces against anti-regime protesters. The most extremist elements of the regime took over the cause and will not let go. Months later, nighttime demonstrations continue, now denouncing regime officials for insufficient fervor, causing a rift within the regime.
These demonstrators are largely affiliated with the Paydari Front, led by hardline, former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, who is popular among segments of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Speakers regularly include former officials from late President Ibrahim Raisi’s administration. Raisi has assumed an almost mythical position among the demonstrators. The speakers cite stories from the former president’s brief time to elevate him as a wise, virtuous, and resolute leader, in contrast with the current decision-makers who, in their view, sell out the Islamic Republic by accepting the Memorandum of Understanding first and then engaging in the current unstable equilibrium, rather than continuing the war outright.
Nighttime demonstrations continue, now denouncing regime officials for insufficient fervor, causing a rift within the regime.
The most common target among the demonstrators is former President Hassan Rouhani. At the rallies, people curse him, even holding up signs calling him Satan. The ire is because Rouhani championed the 2015 nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and has argued in favor of ending the war and reorienting the regime in a way that it can address Iranians’ everyday concerns.
Soon after the ceasefire took effect, demands to end the demonstrations began. But key figures in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have defended the protests. The Tehran commander essentially said that they will continue if the people wish to show up.
Nour News, close with the security policy establishment, published an article entitled, “How to Exile the ‘National Imperative’ from Street to the Sidewalk,” referring to the demonstrations. It argued that defense is a “national imperative,” and military, diplomatic, and societal battlefields form the three sides of the defense triangle. “The experience of the last two wars has shown that missiles and defense systems do not enforce deterrence without societal support,” the editorial stated, but the ongoing nighttime events have transformed into “political dispute settlements,” which is eroding cohesion.
The disagreement is not over the demonstrations, but what they resemble. The Paydari Front believes in “war until victory,” which means the collapse of Israel and departure of U.S. forces from the region. The establishment understands that the current equilibrium favors Iran, which is in it for the long run. Domestically, the dispute is also over the regime’s increasing acquiescence to the Iranian people’s defiance of Islamic rules.
President Masoud Pezeshkian and Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf continue to insist that it is in Iran’s best interest to return to the June agreement. Jalili was the only member of the Supreme National Security Council who voted against it. Then-secretary Mohammad-Bagher Zolghadr did not have voting privileges. He since has been replaced, likely at Pezeshkian’s request.
Domestically, the most conservative hardliners have worried for some time that the regime has been losing its Islamic posture. The January 2026 crackdown on protesters and perceived victory in the war have boosted their morale and their belief they can fight back against the growing secularism of society. Former Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting head and Raisi cabinet member Ezzatollah Zarghami tweeted that he had watched and read The Handmaid’s Tale, calling it a “warning to ideological regimes.” Interestingly, Zarghami is a former Revolutionary Guard senior officer and used to be close to Jalili. Khabar Online, believed to have been close to Ali Larijani during his life, covered the story favorably.
The January 2026 crackdown on protesters and perceived victory in the war have boosted [hardliners’] morale and their belief they can fight back against the growing secularism of society.
Last, there is a brewing fight over who will lead the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. Current head Peyman Jebeli is a Jalili confidant who was the media officer for the Supreme National Security Council when Jalili was secretary. Jebeli’s five-year term will end this fall. During his tenure, he has used his position to promote Paydari positions and attack detractors, even censoring speeches by Pezeshkian and Ghalibaf.
The regime’s elite are trying to diminish the most hardline influence. Just this week, Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i raised the ire of the Paydari Front by indicting two Raisi ministers for corruption.
First, Paydari’s influence is corrosive, and its policy demands are absurd. Yet, as Ali Khamenei once told Jalili after his loss in a presidential election, Jalili’s voters constitute the core of the regime and the Islamic Republic needs them to survive. Second, as the support from the Guard reveals, Paydari has its powerful backers, too.
The regime’s internal politics and direction were always bound to change after Ali Khamenei’s death, just like Khamenei himself reoriented it more toward foreign policy and away from Islamism at home. With him dead, and his son and successor missing from action, the current power plays could determine the Islamic Republic’s shape for years, if not decades, to come.
