Iran hardliners cry foul as Ghalibaf camp gains ground

Watching explosions on television and social media from hundreds of kilometers away, many see the confrontation with the United States as another familiar cycle of pressure that may yet give way to negotiations.

Fatemeh Rajabi, the news anchor who first reported the U.S. strikes on ports and military sites in southern Iran on the YouTube program Hasht-e Shab, says many in the capital find it difficult to grasp that a war is unfolding along the northern shores of the Persian Gulf — the region they casually refer to as “down under.”

Reporter Ali Pakzad, who visited the area during the strikes, says missiles hit targets from Abadan near the Iraqi border to Chabahar and Saravan near Pakistan.

He described damaged fishing vessels, battered ports and communities whose livelihoods have been shattered by attacks documented in the program’s footage.

That contrast lies at the heart of an investigative report by journalist Mira Ghorbanifar in Toseh Irani, titled The South in the Fire of War and Ashes of Ceasefire.

Ghorbanifar writes that explosions now puncture the dawn along Iran’s southern coast. Smoke rises from damaged docks, charred dhows lie abandoned, and fish markets once full of noise now speak only of “a war for which no one has yet chosen a definite name.”

While officials speak of “understandings,” “ceasefires” and “crisis management,” she argues, people in Iran’s south are grappling with damaged infrastructure and disrupted shipping, trying to adapt to what increasingly resembles a war of attrition.

She also asks whether the so-called Islamabad Understanding still exists. Is the fighting along Iran’s southern coast part of the same hundred-day conflict, or the start of a new phase of controlled escalation? And can both sides return to negotiations before crossing a point of no return?

The concerns extend well beyond independent journalists.

Government-aligned newspapers have increasingly questioned whether Iran can sustain a prolonged confrontation while struggling to protect civilians and critical infrastructure.

Moderate daily Sharq describes the country’s predicament as “structural and accumulated,” arguing that damaged infrastructure, naval disruption and collapsing logistics have left even minor shocks capable of triggering major crises.

Centrist Etemad warns that public trust has eroded while the state remains unprepared for cascading emergencies.

Economic newspapers have echoed those warnings.

Jahan Sanat argues that Iran’s deterrence is steadily weakening under sustained pressure, while Donya-ye Eghtesad says military decisions are increasingly driven by political necessity rather than strategic advantage, leaving the country more vulnerable in a prolonged conflict.

Washington-based analysts Mohammad Ghaedi and Farzin Nadimi have voiced similar concerns in interviews with Persian-language media abroad.

Ghaedi argues that Iran’s governing system “has repeatedly refused to learn from past mistakes,” pointing to what he sees as a widening disconnect between insulated decision-makers and citizens bearing the costs of conflict.

Nadimi says Iran is confronting the United States at “a moment of maximum structural fragility,” with deterrence eroding and escalation driven more by political necessity than strategic advantage.

“Iran is not in a position to manage a prolonged conflict,” he warns, adding that every new attack “burns away another part of Iran’s deterrent capability.”

Even hardline media have shown hints of concern. Resalat recently urged Iran to “rebuild its defensive capacity” after recent military losses — a rare acknowledgement from a conservative newspaper that the country’s deterrence has been weakened.

For now, the divide remains striking. In Tehran, politicians and commentators continue to debate negotiations, ceasefires and diplomatic understandings.

Along the southern coast, many residents have already stopped asking what to call the conflict. They are simply living through it.

When the whistle blows for halftime at MetLife Stadium on Sunday, July 19, football's first-ever World Cup halftime show will begin – an 11-minute spectacle curated by Coldplay's Chris Martin, headlined by Madonna, Shakira, Justin Bieber, BTS and Burna Boy, with conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the PS22 Chorus.

And if the past week's frenzy in the Persian-speaking world is to be believed, somewhere in that lineup will stand Bijan Mortazavi, the Iranian violin virtuoso, with his famous white violin.

The story first surfaced through Persian-language music outlets, which reported that FIFA had selected Mortazavi for a live performance during the final's interval.

Skepticism followed almost immediately. FIFA's official announcements listed the marquee names but made no mention of the 68-year-old Iranian, and veteran music journalists would only call it the closest rumor to reality.

Then Mortazavi himself all but ended the debate. He posted a photograph alongside Chris Martin and Gustavo Dudamel, describing an "excellent and fruitful" first rehearsal with the New York Philharmonic, an image Coldplay fan accounts quickly carried around the world.

FIFA has yet to publish his name. But artists do not rehearse with the show's musical director and its conductor by accident, and reports say he will perform one of his instrumental works, with a solo passage on the white violin that has been his visual signature for three decades.

The news set Persian social media alight. Posts declaring "It's confirmed" drew hundreds of thousands of views within hours, and the pride quickly turned pointed.

Users contrasted an artist whose albums are still denied release permits inside Iran standing on the world's biggest stage, while the officials who ban his music watch from a country at war and in crisis. Others noted the bitter symmetry: Iran's team went home; Iran's music reached the final.

That symmetry stings because the national team's bond with its own public has frayed. After the side's elimination – three draws in three games – many Iranians described the failure less as a sporting loss than as a verdict on players seen as siding with the government during the nationwide protests, with defender Ramin Rezaeian's name recurring most often.

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Unlike past tournaments, the matches drew few public gatherings inside Iran, and some openly welcomed the exit. When Shoja Khalilzadeh's late goal against Egypt was ruled offside by five centimeters, users linked it mockingly to his past pledge to dedicate goals to the Supreme Leader.

For millions of Iranians, representation has quietly migrated from the federation's badge to individuals in the diaspora, and Mortazavi embodies that shift.

Born in Sari in 1957, he began violin at three, trained in Tehran under masters including Parviz Yahaghi, and – in a fitting twist – played as a youth goalkeeper, part of Iran's junior national football setup, before music won out.

He left Iran after high school, studied in England, moved to the United States in 1979 and settled in California, where his blend of Persian melody and Western pop made him the best-known Iranian violinist in the world. In 1994 he became the first Iranian artist to headline Los Angeles' Greek Theatre.

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He may not be the only Iranian at MetLife on Sunday. Alireza Faghani – born in Kashmar and the first man to referee at four men's World Cups – is widely reported as FIFA's leading candidate to take charge of the final itself.

Faghani left Iran for Australia in 2019, a move linked to his support for the protest movement, and now officiates under the Australian flag. State media in Tehran has attacked him – even censoring footage of him receiving his 2025 Club World Cup final medal – while many Iranians claim him proudly as their own.

No World Cup has ever had a halftime show. Shakira's "Waka Waka" in 2010, Ricky Martin's "La Copa de la Vida" in 1998 and Jung Kook's Qatar 2022 performance all belonged to the ceremonies, never to the final's interval. 

Which means that if Mortazavi walks out on Sunday, he will not just be the first Iranian on a World Cup final stage. He will be part of the first such stage ever built.

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If FIFA's final appointments hold, Sunday could end with an Iranian raising a violin at halftime and another raising the whistle for kickoff – two men who left, on the one stage the country's team could not reach.

Millions inside Iran will likely watch them the way they watch most things now: on any screen but state television's.

Trump abandoned the proposal within hours after discussions with regional leaders. But before doing so, Iranian officials and commentators seized on it as implicit validation of a position Tehran has long advanced.

The debate began after Trump announced on Truth Social that the United States would collect a 20% charge on all cargo passing through the Strait of Hormuz to cover the costs of securing one of the world's most volatile maritime corridors.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi responded in English, arguing that the country responsible for ensuring safe passage through the strait is entitled to compensation.

"Whoever provides secure and safe passage of commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz should be compensated for this service," he wrote. "Twenty percent is, of course, too much. We will be fair."

Tehran claims vindication

Hardline commentator Ehsan Hosseini argued that Trump's proposal undermined critics inside Iran who had insisted charging ships would violate international law.

"Trump says he will charge a 20% fee for ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz — roughly $15 per barrel of oil. Yet there are people in Iran's Foreign Ministry who insist that charging transit fees violates international law," he wrote.

Mostafa Faghihi, editor of the centrist Entekhab website, reached a similar conclusion, arguing that Trump had effectively legitimized Iran's longstanding position by presenting the charge as a security fee. He predicted many countries would nevertheless resist such a policy, potentially undermining Washington's own strategic interests.

Reformist journalist Ahmad Zeidabadi offered a different interpretation.

"I doubt Trump seriously intends to implement it," he wrote on Telegram. "More likely, he wants to encourage other countries to join the United States in confronting Iran in the Persian Gulf."

Zeidabadi also suggested Trump may have been attempting to undermine Iran's own proposal by making governments more wary of transit charges generally and linking any US withdrawal of the idea to a similar concession by Tehran.

Iran's Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, meanwhile, avoided commenting directly on the proposed fee but rejected the broader premise that Washington could organize maritime traffic through Hormuz.

It warned that any attempt by US forces to direct shipping outside routes designated by Tehran and without coordination with Iran's armed forces would face "strong resistance."

Iranian media presented the statement as a forceful response to Trump's announcement.

International pushback

The United Kingdom, Australia and Brazil rejected the proposal, arguing that international shipping through the Strait of Hormuz should remain free from transit charges.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) also dismissed the proposal, saying it had no legal basis under international law.

"We have always been consistent on our stance on fees—IMO stands firmly against charging fees for passage through straits used for international navigation," an IMO spokesperson said.

Online reactions reflected the same divide.

Some critics of the Iranian government argued that Trump's proposal differed fundamentally from Tehran's because Washington described it as payment for escort and security services rather than a transit toll.

One user wrote: "This isn't a toll. It's an escort fee for ships because of the insecurity we created ourselves. We've handed Trump exactly the justification he needed by repeatedly using the Strait of Hormuz as a negotiating tool."

Trump's proposal survived for only a few hours. But its political afterlife may prove longer.

By arguing that the power securing Hormuz was entitled to compensation, Trump handed Tehran a rhetorical opening to defend its own claims—even though neither country has convinced the world that one of its most important waterways can be treated as a source of unilateral revenue.

Mahmoud Nabavian lost his position as the committee's first deputy chairman, while Ebrahim Rezaei was replaced as the committee's spokesperson, according to the committee's annual leadership vote.

Ebrahim Azizi was elected committee chairman, Abbas Moghtadaei and Amir Hayat-Moghaddam were chosen as first and second deputy chairmen, Hassan Ghashghavi was elected spokesperson, and Behnam Saeedi and Yaghoub Rezazadeh became the committee's secretaries.

Critics of US negotiations

Nabavian and Rezaei had emerged as two of parliament's most vocal opponents of negotiations with Washington during and after the conflict with the United States and Israel.

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Nabavian repeatedly argued that any agreement with Washington would amount to an "absolute loss" for Iran and said the country's experience of negotiations had only brought "broken promises, deception and benefits for the enemy."

He also criticized Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

Earlier this month, Nabavian also vowed to oppose what he described as a "coup," accusing unnamed political rivals of trying to sideline hardline forces.

Rezaei also said Iran was not intimidated by what he described as threats from US President Donald Trump and that the country was "ready to fight any evil."

In a separate post, he praised the Revolutionary Guards for what he described as asserting Iran's authority over the Strait of Hormuz.

Leak controversy

Nabavian also came under scrutiny after reading excerpts on state television from what he described as secret correspondence from Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei on negotiations with the United States. The broadcast was cut off as he continued speaking.

Nabavian said Khamenei had repeatedly objected to the course of the talks and set conditions that were not reflected in the Iran-US memorandum of understanding, including securing compensation from the United States, preserving Iran's uranium enrichment program and maintaining exclusive Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz. He also said Khamenei wanted Iran to begin charging some ships to transit the waterway.

State broadcaster IRIB later said Nabavian's references to classified correspondence could warrant legal action. Ghalibaf adviser Amir Ebrahim Rasouli subsequently called on authorities to identify the source of what he described as confidential state information provided to Nabavian.

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Parliament returns after months

The committee reshuffle came a day after parliament returned to session, with Deputy Speaker Hamidreza Hajibabaei presiding instead of Ghalibaf.

More than 250 lawmakers attended the session, during which legislators chanted slogans calling for revenge for the killing of former supreme leader Ali Khamenei and other senior officials killed in US and Israeli strikes.

Hardline lawmakers affiliated with the Paydari Front had spent months criticizing Ghalibaf for parliament's inactivity, accusing him of preventing lawmakers from meeting in order to avoid parliamentary action against negotiations with the United States. They also repeatedly called for Araghchi's resignation over the talks.

Ghalibaf's office said at the time that the suspension of parliamentary sessions had followed instructions from security authorities.

The revenge-laden rhetoric that dominated the week-long mourning ceremonies for former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is rapidly evolving into something broader.

State media have published images depicting not only US officials but also European leaders, including France’s Emmanuel Macron and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, as targets.

On Monday, July 13, Ali Mahdian, a hardline seminarian and academic associated with the late Ayatollah Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah Yazdi, the ideological father of the ultraconservative Paydari Front, went further still, seeking to provide a religious justification for political assassination.

Writing in the Tehran municipality’s daily Hamshahri, Mahdian presented the killing of Western leaders and those he held responsible for the deaths of senior Iranian figures not as terrorism but as a “divine mission.”

Citing Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against author Salman Rushdie, he rejected the argument that a sovereign state should not engage in targeted killings. Referring to remarks by Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani, Mahdian even suggested that an actor inside the United States might carry out such an attack.

“This is a global wrath… an era in which the head of Satan must be cut off,” he concluded with an apocalyptic call to action. “Everyone must help: scholars, clerics, preachers, speakers, broadcasters, channel writers, officials, Iranians, Iraqis, everyone.”

The significance lies less in the practicality of his appeal than in how openly such arguments are now being advanced in an established state newspaper.

Late last week, US forces resumed strikes on Iranian military infrastructure, while Iran retaliated against American bases across the Persian Gulf. President Donald Trump announced a renewed blockade of Iranian shipping, saying the United States would keep the Strait of Hormuz open.

Tehran, meanwhile, says transit through the strait is no longer possible because of US military action and insists it retains control over the strategic waterway, while threatening further retaliation.

The same day, Kayhan offered a strategic counterpart to Mahdian’s theological argument.

In a commentary by Alireza Mashouri, introduced as a scholar of international relations, the newspaper called for Iran to abandon its longstanding policy of “strategic patience” in favour of what he termed “offensive diplomacy.”

“When a state exercises restraint, enemies do not see it as moral high ground or peace-loving nature; they calculate it as a lack of capability or will to respond,” he wrote.

Mashouri argued that Iran’s year of compliance after the US withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal convinced its adversaries that Tehran lacked the will to respond, paving the way for “maximum pressure,” targeted assassinations and progressively bolder military attacks.

“In global politics, there is no such thing as a moral ledger where a state is rewarded later for its past good behavior,” Mashouri wrote. “This does not mean starting a war; it means making the cost of aggression real for the enemy.”

None of this necessarily means that Tehran has adopted political assassination or uncontrolled escalation as formal policy.

Iran has a long history of violence against opposition figures and regional adversaries, but public appeals for the killing of sitting Western leaders represent a notable escalation in the language emerging from influential hardline circles.

More significant than the rhetoric itself may be the erosion of the political and ideological case for restraint. As US and Iranian forces exchange attacks and the dispute over Hormuz becomes another front in the war, hardline voices increasingly portray negotiation not as a means of protecting Iran but as proof of weakness.

What began as funeral rhetoric is becoming something more consequential: an argument that the era of strategic patience is over, and that peace now demands a justification war no longer does.