Many have wondered why the United States, after months of failed “talks”, continued on the diplomatic path despite few to no outcomes that support it being a road to success. It appears the answer to that wonderment may center on Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
Of late, President Pezeshkian has been notably vocal about the need to fulfill the MOU, return to diplomacy, and consolidate the “victory” for Iran on the heels of the conflict. So vocal that he has been censored by internal Iranian news agencies over being too direct about the need for “peace” and a “deal” when compared against more military conflict.
President Pezeshkian’s stance has put the United States in a difficult position, but also an opportunistic one. They see that the civilian-elected Iranian president is pushing for negotiations and a deal that the United States desires. A potential opportunity for a mutually beneficial outcome. On the other hand, that same president controls zero functional levers of power. The strategy for the U.S. appears to be create space for Pezeshkian to reach the point of a “deal”, or let his efforts play out as long as possible to avoid renewed hostilities. When you weigh that patience against the likely costs of further military engagement, the United States’ patience reads as both intelligent and warranted. And that is also where the formal constraints of the Iranian system become decisive.
Pezeshkian represents a path to a negotiated peace under this logic. But that narrative misses the structure that allowed him into office in the first place, and that structure remains intact. The Guardian Council and the broader IRGC-linked apparatus that approved him continue to hold the decisive authority. As a result, diplomacy remains constrained by institutions that do not answer to the elected president.
Reframing today with more historical context, the United States may have put too little weight on that structure. It is a system built to retain power through disruption, and that is exactly what it continues to do. The desired diplomatic offramp is unlikely to materialize absent more force - be it large or smaller scale - because the elected office does not control the relevant levers. To color in this assessment, we have to understand some recent history and political structures that typically go undiscussed.
Here is what I mean by that:
On May 19, 2024 Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash, creating an unexpected opening in Iranian politics. In short, a Bell 212 helicopter carrying Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and several senior officials, went down in mountainous terrain near the Azerbaijan border amid dense fog. It was flying in a group of three military helicopters when the trio was instructed to climb to avoid the weather. The other two helicopters successfully avoided the weather, while the President’s helicopter ran into a mountain and all aboard the president’s aircraft were killed. Iranian authorities attributed the accident primarily to sudden weather conditions, though there remains speculation around the actual circumstances of the crash.
The crash forced a snap election and produced an outcome that few had anticipated: the elevation of Masoud Pezeshkian, a cardiac surgeon and long-serving parliamentarian from Tabriz, to the presidency.
Pezeshkian was not known to be a radical. To wit, he was a reformist-leaning figure with a record of loyalty to the Islamic Republic and to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. He served as health minister under Mohammad Khatami, represented an Azeri constituency, and maintained a generally clean personal image that managed to walk the line between the IRGC and support for the broader Iranian people - a skill one must have in a country that has clear structural divides and not all sides necessarily keep the best interests of all parties in mind. But, his current time in office was not his first attempt at ascending to the presidency.
In 2021, the Iranian Guardian Council had barred Pezeshkian from the presidential race as part of a broader exclusion of reformists and moderates designed to clear the path for Raisi. The Guardian Council is a 12-member board that approves the presidential candidates - then the people vote for the approved candidates. At the time, the system favored a president aligned with hardline priorities. This sidelined Pezeshkian in favor of Raisi. Raisi was deeply unpopular with the Iranian people, uprisings began, and the emotional temperature inside Iran was fairly high at the time of Raisi’s death. This created some challenges for internal stability, as the civilian population wildly outnumbers IRGC headcount; that stability must be maintained for the system to retain credibility.
Seeing this backdrop following the death of Raisi, the Guardian Council approved Pezeshkian in 2024. The change in tone reflected a calculated decision rather than any fundamental change in the Council’s membership or broader belief structure. This leads to the reason why negotiations remain constrained:
The U.S. may have read Pezeshkian as a credible moderate who would make a deal under duress for the benefit of the Iranian people. To exploit that determination, Israeli and U.S. strikes eliminated top layers of the hardline leadership. The aim being that a softer leadership would emerge, or that Pezeshkian as a leader of “the people” would win out, be able to make a deal, and a new and brighter day for Iran and global security could emerge. This roadmap aligns with early U.S. messaging about the war.
What receives less weight in that reading is that Pezeshkian was effectively approved to serve a specific function: absorb public discontent and raise participation without altering control of the core institutions. The Guardian Council did not soften and the hardliners remained in place as they were. It is a structure, not a person. The IRGC system produced a president who could bring some civil quiet and unification - not one empowered to undercut their regional, global, or internal coercive power.
Leading up to the election in 2024, Iran had experienced chronically low turnout in recent elections which created a legitimacy problem for the IRGC. Raisi’s death required a rapid succession process, and approving a single, relatively safe moderate candidate offered a means of raising participation and absorbing public discontent without surrendering control of the core institutions. Pezeshkian seems to have been read by the U.S. as an opening when in practice the role he plays is the one the system permitted, and those permissions have limits.
To wit, the Guardian Council is the institutional mechanism that makes such calculations possible and in essence allows the deeper power structure to retain control of civilian government. It is a twelve-member body established by the Iranian Constitution where six members are Islamic jurists appointed directly by the Supreme Leader. The other six are legal experts nominated by the head of the judiciary—who is himself appointed by the Leader—and approved by parliament. The IRGC and the institutions linked to it essentially control the apparatus beyond the president, making the notion of a “civilian government” more theater than a practical, change-making body. This dynamic was present when Pezeshkian was allowed to run, remained following the leadership decapitation strikes, and is present now. It functions to prevent elected government from overtaking or working against the deeper power structure. This structure is more-less in place to avoid what Pezeshkian is advocating for from coming to fruition.
Framing further back to the election of President Pezeshkian, the Iranian public responded positively to Pezeshkian’s candidacy. This was a candidate who wasn’t IRGC, had a background in helping people via medicine, and was known to be a more moderate political voice. As a result, he defeated the hardliner Saeed Jalili in a runoff, capitalizing on the desire for economic relief and some forms of modest social easing. This is the signal the U.S. was given in 2024; Iran has a new president who is more moderate, seems to care more about the people, and we may be able to make a deal with him that we haven’t been able to in the past as the Iranian people showed us they want moderation. In other words, this is an opening to engage Iran that we haven’t had in many years if ever - so, capitalize.
Both the backstory of the election and the derived U.S. calculus makes sense. Simultaneously, the structural constraints of the IRGC system remain intact. Actual authority over national security, the nuclear program, and the red lines of foreign policy resides with the Supreme Leader and the IRGC today just as it always has - as it operates alongside a more populist president of the system’s own approval. The presidency manages day-to-day administration and can shape tone; it does not command the decisive levers of power, and will almost certainly not be allowed to negotiate away Iranian power or leverage - which they have demonstrated to be the case.
By the summer of 2026 the limits of Pezeshkian’s position favoring diplomacy became increasingly clear. He continued to argue for engagement with the United States as a path to economic relief and for that effort, elements of the security establishment pushed back, accusing the president of weakness, and restricting his access to the airwaves. Economic hardship gave him a public argument he could credibly sell against the “hardline” message: the cost of confrontation was being borne by ordinary Iranians. It did not, however, give him the institutional power to compel the IRGC to accept terms that threatened its core interests or the system’s red lines on the nuclear program and the Strait of Hormuz.
The United States seems to have sought to test whether a more moderate president under economic stress could shift the internal balance. Military pressure, a naval presence around Hormuz, and the collapse of an interim memorandum of understanding were followed by a renewed emphasis on economic isolation. To be discussed in more detail tomorrow, the administration has prepared what it described as an unprecedented tightening of secondary sanctions—an “Economic D-Day” intended to close remaining revenue channels by threatening any country, bank, or intermediary still dealing with Iran. Iranian officials called the measures a declaration of war, while countries like China and Russia showed no inclination to enforce them. The historical record shows that the IRGC has repeatedly absorbed severe economic pain rather than conceded on foundational security positions, but these actions may be severe enough to alter the future of that scorecard.
Pezeshkian remains moderate enough for the system to tolerate and popular enough among segments of the public to complicate pure hardline rule. However, he is not powerful enough to void the security establishment. The economic suffering of the population strengthens his rhetoric but it has not, so far, produced a strategic recalculation at the level required for a durable agreement on the nuclear file or control of the Strait. The United States can intensify costs on multiple fronts while the IRGC can continue to demonstrate it is prepared to bear them. Between those two realities resides an Iranian president who can advocate for a deal but cannot deliver one against the internal institutions that retain veto authority absent dovish changes to their stated positions.
Whether the current combination of economic extremity and external pressure produces a different outcome depends less on the preferences of the elected president than on the calculations of the forces that stand behind him and, when necessary, above him.
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