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While Washington debates whether a Hormuz deal is hours or days away, the man nominally running Iran's civilian government has been quietly trying to quit — for the 28th time.
Reports surfaced Monday from Iran International, the London-based independent outlet with deep sourcing inside the regime, that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has submitted or threatened to submit his resignation nearly 30 times since taking office. Each attempt has been blocked by the new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei — a man who has not appeared in public, issued a video address, or granted a single interview since being announced as Iran's new dictator in March following his father's assassination during Operation Epic Fury.
The account came from a cleric with direct family ties to the Khamenei household — Mohammad-Bagher Kharrazi, secretary-general of Iran's Hezbollah party — who said in a now-viral video that Mojtaba had finally had enough. "If he resigns one more time, I will approve it. I will write 'approved' underneath it, and that will be the end of it," Kharrazi quoted the hidden Supreme Leader as saying. The result: Pezeshkian backed down again.
Pezeshkian responded with the kind of damage control only an authoritarian state produces: a staged, four-part pre-recorded interview released through state-run IRNA in which he insisted repeatedly that he was not resigning. "I will not resign and I will stand firm," he told the cameras. "If I want to resign, I will officially announce that I have resigned." It was a denial structured to run in installments — meaning the regime is managing a slow bleed of a story, not killing it.
What's driving Pezeshkian's desperation to exit? The IRGC. According to the Iran International reporting, Pezeshkian's own advisers have confirmed that the Revolutionary Guards have effectively frozen the civilian government out of every consequential decision — national security, foreign policy, the Hormuz negotiations. A resignation letter attributed to the president from May complained that "the president and the government have effectively been excluded from major and vital decision-making processes" and that hardline IRGC factions had seized operational control of the state.
This is the regime the Biden administration spent four years trying to legitimize with sanctions relief, and the same regime the State Department insists can be trusted in nuclear talks. The reality playing out inside Tehran is chaos: a figurehead president trying to escape, a military junta running foreign policy, and a Supreme Leader so weakened — or so badly injured in the U.S. airstrikes that preceded his ascension — that he hasn't dared show his face in five months.
Rumors about Mojtaba Khamenei's physical condition have circulated since before he was formally installed. Multiple reports suggest he was injured — possibly disfigured or worse — in strikes connected to the February campaign. The Iranian government has denied every report, but no denial substitutes for a public appearance. Meanwhile, Pezeshkian has ostentatiously walked Tehran's streets, taken selfies with citizens, and projected the image of an engaged president — precisely because the actual Supreme Leader cannot or will not do the same.
The White House claims peace talks are imminent. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters Monday there was "a chance we may have a deal today or tomorrow." But Iran's Foreign Ministry denied any talks are occurring at all. And on Tuesday, another commercial vessel was struck in the Strait of Hormuz. Someone inside Iran's power structure is still shooting — and it isn't Pezeshkian.
