Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf claimed Iranian unity on Thursday, firing back at President Donald Trump‘s assertion that the Iranians are “having a very hard time figuring out who their leader is.”
Ghalibaf said in a statement that “there are no radicals or moderates” in Iran, referring to a statement from Trump earlier in the day in which the U.S. president said there has been infighting between Iranian “hardliners” and “moderates.”
“We are all ‘Iranian’ and ‘revolutionary,’ and with the iron unity of the nation and government, with complete obedience to the Supreme Leader of the Revolution, we will make the aggressor criminal regret his actions,” Ghalibaf wrote on X.
The Iranian regime selected Mojtaba Khamenei to succeed his father as the country’s supreme leader after an Israeli strike killed Ali Khamenei on the first day of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. Since then, Mojtaba Khamenei has been notably absent from any public appearances.
As speculations from the West swirl regarding Khamenei’s absence and his reported injury during an airstrike, the Trump administration has noted a power struggle between two factions in the Islamic regime. Ghalibaf and Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Abbas Araghchi, who led the Iranian delegation at the Islamabad peace talks, are seen by many pundits as more moderate than the more rigid Major General Ahmad Vahidi of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Israeli Channel 12 reported on Thursday that Ghalibaf allegedly resigned from Iran’s negotiations team.
“Iran is having a very hard time figuring out who their leader is!” Trump wrote on Truth Social Thursday morning. “They just don’t know! The infighting is between the ‘Hardliners,’ who have been losing BADLY on the battlefield, and the ‘Moderates,’ who are not very moderate at all (but gaining respect!), is CRAZY!”
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But Araghchi reposted Ghalibaf’s statement on X and defended the assertion that Iran is united.
“The failure of Israel’s terrorist killings is reflected in how Iran’s state institutions continue to act with unity, purpose, and discipline,” Araghchi said. “The battlefield and diplomacy are fully coordinated fronts in the same war. Iranians are all united, more than ever before.”