As negotiations between the United States and Iran enter a critical stage, a small but influential hardline faction has intensified efforts to sabotage a potential deal with Washington, fuelling President Donald Trump’s claims of divisions within the Islamic Republic.
The group shares Trump’s view that the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers was a mistake – but for different reasons. Its positions are so hostile to the West, even by the standards of Iran’s conservative hardliners, that the regime’s efforts to appease it have so far failed.
And as the Islamic Republic’s new leaders project unity in the face of the gravest existential threat the regime has faced, the ultra-hardline…