President Donald Trump expressed growing frustration with Iranian negotiators on Wednesday, accusing them of lying and cheating, as the latest escalation in tensions reveals a deeper problem for Washington: whether the officials at the negotiating table have the authority to deliver an agreement — or whether anyone in Tehran does.
«I don’t know if we’re going to have a deal. We may just do it without a deal,» Trump said at the NATO summit in Ankara. «These people, they lie and they cheat.» However, Trump’s frustration with Iran’s negotiators is only part of the challenge. Since the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, it has become increasingly unclear who in Tehran has the power to make and enforce an agreement.
Mojtaba Khamenei succeeded his father as supreme leader after the elder Khamenei was killed in the opening U.S.-Israeli attacks on Feb. 28. But Mojtaba has not appeared publicly since the attack, and U.S. assessments cited by Reuters have described authority as dispersed among senior Revolutionary Guard commanders and powerful civilian officials.
Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a former IRGC commander who led Iran’s negotiating delegation, has emerged as one of the country’s most powerful surviving political figures. Banafsheh Zand, an Iranian-American journalist and editor of the Iran So Far Away Substack, said power inside the Islamic Republic has fractured since the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, leaving the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as the country’s dominant force.
«The person who is negotiating with the U.S. is not necessarily someone who is endorsed by the others,» Zand told Fox News Digital. She described Ghalibaf as one power center competing with figures including IRGC commander-in-chief Ahmad Vahidi, Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani and former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Vahidi controls the IRGC’s overall military structure, while Qaani oversees its external operations and relationships with Iran-aligned armed groups across the region. Zarif, by contrast, remains closely identified with the more accommodationist political camp that previously championed negotiations and sanctions relief.
«The hardliners, in terms of their political presence, have also been pushed aside,» Zand said. «So really, it’s the IRGC. And within the IRGC, whoever signs the deal is not necessarily signing on behalf of everybody else. They’re signing on behalf of themselves.» Her assessment reflects a central problem facing Washington: Iran’s negotiators, political institutions and military commanders may not share the same interpretation of what was agreed — or the same willingness to implement it.
Yet Trump’s declaration does not necessarily mean diplomacy has been permanently abandoned. Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital that the clearest evidence would be the restoration of the U.S. blockade, the introduction of additional military forces or a new round of major economic sanctions. Otherwise, he said, Trump may continue operating in the «gray zone» between negotiations and open war while keeping his options available.
The more difficult question is why Tehran would jeopardize sanctions relief and risk overwhelming American firepower when its military has already been severely degraded. Ben Taleblu said Iran’s leaders appear to believe escalation is essential to the survival of the Islamic Republic. «This is a regime that is weaker, but lethal, and less capable, but more confident,» he said. Iran’s leadership believes its adversaries have vulnerable economic and military interests throughout the Gulf, he added, while the regime itself is more willing to accept destruction. «Their survival and their military success and their political success runs through more, not less, escalation,» he said.
Lisa Daftari, foreign policy analyst and the editor-in-chief of The Foreign Desk, agrees the escalation is deliberate, aimed at turning regional instability into leverage. «By targeting commercial shipping and Arab states, the regime is signaling that it can hold global energy flows and America’s regional partners hostage to extract leverage, distract from its domestic crisis, and test U.S. red lines,» Daftari told Fox News Digital. She said Tehran is betting that Washington and its Arab partners will be unwilling to sustain another war and will ultimately back down first. «The regime’s core weapon is time,» Daftari said. «By escalating in the Persian Gulf and attacking ships and Arab states, they are creating rolling crises that raise the cost of confronting them while they consolidate power at home.»
Daftari argued that the strategy reflects the Islamic Republic’s longstanding character rather than a temporary response to pressure. «This regime was never designed to be reformed or softened,» she said. «What they are showing us now is exactly who they intend to remain: a hardline, revolutionary regime determined to stay in power.» But determining how that strategy is translated into action is more complicated. Authority in Tehran appears divided, raising questions about who is directing the escalation and whether the officials negotiating with Washington can commit the broader security establishment. That division is already visible in the dispute over the Strait of Hormuz, where a Middle Eastern source familiar with the issue told Fox News Digital that Tehran and Washington are operating from fundamentally different assumptions about the chain of command.
