Iran hardliners said to have launched attacks in defiance of leaders, sabotaging peace deal

A group of Iranian hardliners launched attacks on ships in Hormuz without the knowledge of Iranian leaders or even the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in early July, effectively bringing an end to peace efforts between Iran and the US, the New York Times reports.

The report, citing Iranian officials,  details how Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian was surprised by the attack and angrily called IRGC chief Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, who told him that he neither authorized nor had prior knowledge of the strikes.

The report says that the Supreme National Security Council also had no knowledge of the strikes, which provoked a US response and ultimately derailed a Memorandum of Understanding between Tehran and Washington aimed at ending the war.

The report says that the ability of the fringe hardline group to influence policy was because of the vacuum in leadership left due to the fact that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen in public since taking power after his father Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening strikes of the war.

The sources say the incident lead to some of the most volatile disagreements among Iran’s leaders in recent years, with several threatening to resign.

The report identifies the head of the hardline faction as cleric Hossein Taeb, the recently appointed head of the Basij militia and a former IRGC spymaster.

He had led the intelligence arm of the IRGC for almost one-and-a-half decades up until June 2022, when he was suddenly replaced.

Why he was forced out was never made clear, although his departure coincided with the leaking of details over an alleged plot to target Israelis in Turkey.

Long seen as close to Mojtaba Khamenei, Taeb’s appointment is seen as a sign of the authorities’ readiness to suppress any repeat of the mass protests that erupted in January this year.