Days after Iran’s leadership projected a united front, undermining the long-cited moderate-hardliner divide, President Donald Trump canceled planned talks with Tehran in Islamabad, Pakistan, citing “infighting and confusion” within the regime.
Iranian-American experts say social media posts from Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, President Masoud Pezeshkian and other key officials reveal that the “good cop, bad cop” tactics the regime exploited to deceive opponents and secure generous concessions in nuclear negotiations have collapsed.
In a Truth Social post on Saturday, Trump announced he had canceled the trip, citing “too much time wasted traveling” and “too much work!”
“Additionally, there is tremendous infighting and confusion within their ‘leadership,’” the president added, noting that “no one knows who is in charge, including them.”
President Donald Trump speaks from the Cross Hall of the White House in Washington, DC, on April 1, 2026, to update the nation on the war in Iran. (Getty Images)
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“We also have all the cards, they have none!” Trump wrote. “If they want to talk, all they have to do is call!!!”
The implosion of the regime’s hard-moderate divide could have profound consequences for Trump’s approach to the nuclear talks in Islamabad, experts say. Trump appeared to hint last week at a vague rift between factions within Iran.
“Iran is having a really hard time figuring out who their leader is! They just don’t know! The battle is between the ‘Hardliners’, who are losing BADLY on the battlefield, and the ‘Moderates’, who are not very moderate at all (but are gaining respect!), and it’s CRAZY!” Trump wrote in an X-post on Thursday.
Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader and second son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, attends a meeting in Tehran, Iran. (Hamed Jafarnejad/ISNA/WANA/Reuters)
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Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei quickly fired back, claiming that “because of the strange unity that has emerged among compatriots, a rift has emerged in the enemy.”
“With practical gratitude for this blessing, cohesion has become even greater and steelier, and the enemies will become even more miserable and smaller,” Khamenei wrote. “The enemy’s media operations are intended to undermine national unity and security, by targeting the minds and psyche of the people; may our negligence not allow this sinister intent to materialize.”
A poster of Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei is pasted on the windshield of a motorcycle as government supporters gather in Tehran on April 9, 2026, to mark the 40th day since the assassination of his father, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. (Vahid Salemi/AP)
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The officials would then tell their colleagues that they are under pressure from hardliners, implying that the West must make concessions to strengthen them internally.
“Because of the war, the Trump administration finds itself in a remarkably advantageous situation vis-à-vis the imperial terror state, one that has never been attempted before, much less achieved,” Memarsadeghi said.
“But every time Trump says that regime change has already occurred, he is denying America the opportunity to finally be truly rid of the world’s largest sponsor of terror and the existential threat it poses, not just to the Iranian people but to the entire world.”
Navid Mohebbi, who worked as a Persian media analyst for the State Department’s Public Affairs Bureau, warned that while rivalries and factions exist within the Islamic Republic, they agree on the regime’s core principles.
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“So-called moderates have never had the final say on key strategic issues and are often used to soften the regime’s image abroad,” he said. “From the perspective of the Iranian people, there is little difference. In all governments labeled as ‘moderate’ or ‘hardline,’ the system has consistently relied on repression.”
Mohebbi cited the example of Iranian regime President Hassan Rouhani, who presented himself as a moderate but whose security forces violently killed 1,500 protesters during the November 2019 uprising.
Members of security forces watch over the crowd during a funeral procession for IRGC Navy Chief Alireza Tangsiri and other senior Navy commanders killed in US-Israeli attacks in late March in Tehran, Iran, April 1, 2026. (Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)
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“The same pattern has continued under Masoud Pezeshkian during the January 2026 protest massacre, reinforcing the reality that these labels have not translated into meaningful changes on the ground,” he said.
“The joint response from the heads of the three branches of power was in response to Trump’s reference to the issue of division and also to the fact that there are indeed hardliners and moderates,” the official added.
“Look, when Iran wants to make concessions, they throw the moderates under the bus so the moderates make a deal, and then the hardliners blame them for the same concessions they all agreed to.”
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‘In reality, all these figures are Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf [speaker of Iran’s parliament]Saeed Jalili [member of the Expediency Discernment Council]Pezeshkian, Ahmad Vahidi [head of the IRGC]Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei [head of Iran’s judiciary] – operating within the same ideological framework,” Bazargan said.
“They are all committed to preserving the system, projecting power in the region and confronting what they define as ‘the forces of evil,’ namely the United States and Israel.”
