Who Is Going to Drink the Cup of Poison?
S. Rouzbeh
۱۴۰۴/۱۲/۱۸

S. Rouzbeh argues that Masoud Pezeshkian’s call to apologise to Iran’s neighbours and halt attacks has exposed a fractured chain of command: the central question is no longer simply whether Tehran may retreat, but who has the authority to decide—and make that decision stick.

S. Rouzbeh – Masoud Pezeshkian’s recent remarks about apologising to neighbouring countries and the need to halt attacks were not a simple turn in diplomatic language, but a window into the command room of a government from which a single voice no longer emerges. On 7 March 2026, Iran’s president said that the Interim Leadership Council had approved a decision not to attack neighbouring countries unless Iran were attacked from their territory. He even apologised to neighbouring countries harmed by Iran’s attacks. Yet that same message met with a fierce response from figures close to the hard core of power that very day, showing that in Tehran there is not only no consensus over the path to war or peace, but perhaps no one left who can convey a final order, intact, to every part of the power structure.

What emerged from this episode was more than a verbal contradiction. Pezeshkian spoke of scaling back the conflict, while opponents within the establishment, including Mohammad-Manan Raisi and Ebrahim Azizi, called this position a sign of weakness and insisted on continuing the fight. Even Ezzatollah Zarghami questioned the expression ‘at will’, which featured prominently in interpretations of Pezeshkian’s remarks. This multiplicity of voices is not merely a media mishap. It is the moment when the façade of power begins to crack, showing that the government is still alive, but that its authority may no longer carry weight.

In these circumstances, the central question is no longer whether Tehran is close to retreating. The question is this: if the moment to drink the cup of poison has arrived, who, in fact, has the right to take it in hand? Under the Constitution of the Islamic Republic, the declaration of war and peace, as well as supreme command of the armed forces, fall within the Leader’s remit. Article 111 also states that in the absence of a Leader, an interim council consisting of the president, the head of the judiciary and a cleric from the Guardian Council temporarily assumes his duties. But this same article contains a decisive complication: to exercise some of the Leader’s most fundamental powers, including decisions on war and peace and certain key appointments and dismissals, the council needs the agreement of three-quarters of the members of the Expediency Discernment Council. In other words, even under the law, this council is not a smooth, unobstructed command centre, but a cumbersome, slow-moving structure constrained by its own internal mechanisms.

This is where the ‘soft coup’ analysis takes on meaning. Not in the sense that the IRGC has formally taken to the streets with tanks and dissolved other institutions, but in the sense that the military sphere and hard-power networks have, in practice, managed to outpace the government and drain political decisions of their effect. When the president speaks of halting attacks on neighbouring countries, but public discourse and reports from that same day continue to describe further strikes and a fierce verbal revolt by hardliners against his position, the impression gains ground that the formal institution remains in place, while the real reins of command are held elsewhere. This is the soft coup: rendering a lawful institution ineffective without anyone formally declaring its dissolution.

At the same time, pressure to choose a new Leader as quickly as possible has made this rift more visible. Reuters has reported that two influential hard-line clerics, Nasser Makarem Shirazi and Hossein Nouri Hamedani, have called for the appointment of a new Leader to be expedited. This itself points to the dissatisfaction of a section of the religious establishment with leaving the country under the umbrella of a three-member council. The pressure clearly shows that parts of the power structure regard the council not as a solution, but merely as a shaky bridge across the crisis. In such an atmosphere, any talk of moderation or retreat is, for hardliners, not merely a tactical position but a threat to their place in the post-war order.

Washington, meanwhile, has gone beyond its usual language of pressure. On 6 and 7 March, Donald Trump spoke of ‘unconditional surrender’, then warned that Iran would be hit ‘very hard’ on Saturday. This is no longer the language of limited containment; it is the language of imposing a strategic retreat. Yet it is precisely here that Tehran confronts its greatest incapacity: a country that must respond to an external threat has still not made clear who within it has the authority to give the final answer. If Pezeshkian is only the voice of part of the government, then who is the world’s real interlocutor? If the Interim Council has authority, why does no single voice emerge from it? And if there is no single voice, should the world take its message of peace from the government, or its message of war from the battlefield?

In the meantime, another question comes to the fore: if America’s ‘hard Saturday’ is carried out, which part of the establishment will be sacrificed so that the system as a whole can stay on its feet for a few more days? Will the government, as the system’s softer face, be pushed forward to shoulder the burden of an unavoidable compromise? Will the Expediency Discernment Council, drawing on the legal standing granted to it by the Constitution, become a channel for approving an unavoidable retreat? Or, on the contrary, will the military sphere and the hardliners seek to further neutralise official institutions, suffocate any form of moderation and push the country towards a more naked form of military rule? The Constitution has blocked the way, external pressure is gathering pace, and the internal rift has already emerged from behind the curtain. In this turbulent arena, every scenario depends less on the will of one person than on the struggle between factions, each seeking to place the cost of defeat on another’s shoulders.

The upshot of these developments is clear. The Islamic Republic is now facing at least three deadlocks at once: a leadership deadlock, a command deadlock and a deadlock in conveying a unified message. For years, this system tried to present itself as united, made of iron and obedient to command. But now, at a moment of danger, the same system reveals itself from within as an out-of-tune orchestra, with each instrument playing a different tune. Pezeshkian speaks of containing the war, hardliners call it a sign of humiliation, influential clerics seek a new Leader, and Trump speaks of surrender and a devastating blow. This is no longer merely a war crisis. It is a crisis of decision-making authority.

So perhaps the right question is no longer who will drink the cup of poison. The more fundamental question is whether, in this exhausted and fragmented structure, there is anyone left who can take the cup in hand, issue the order and make it carry through to the lowest ranks of the armed forces. For a government that, at a moment of life or death, cannot even agree on who should deliver the final message has already exposed itself from within, before it is defeated on the external battlefield.

Source: https://srouzbeh.com/en/posts/archive-006ab38e-588f-e477-0e8d-6a2e565d1c29
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