Rival camps block any unified Iranian position in negotiations

The systemic institutional divide between Iran’s civilian moderates and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has escalated from a policy disagreement into a structural breakdown of statecraft. While the moderate faction retains administration over traditional diplomatic channels, their operational authority is functionally checkmated by the IRGC's control over the security apparatus and strategic economic sectors. This internal fragmentation paralyzes Iran’s foreign policy, generating highly volatile and contradictory geopolitical signaling that oscillates rapidly between conciliation and military escalation. Furthermore, the strategic vacuum left by an uninterventionist supreme leader’s office allows competing factions to interpret institutional silence as unilateral authorization for their respective agendas. Consequently, external interlocutors face a deeply unreliable negotiating framework where no single domestic actor possesses the comprehensive authority to commit the state to an international agreement. Ultimately, this structural improvisation erodes traditional external leverage, as diplomatic incentives or warnings are consistently absorbed and distorted by Iran's internal power struggles.

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