Who’s Really Running Iran?

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**Natalie Kitroeff** (0:31)
From The New York Times, I'm Natalie Kitroeff. This is The Daily.
It was a chaotic weekend of news out of Washington. There was a shooting at an event where President Trump and top cabinet officials were gathered, which we're following and we'll update on later in the show. And also, Trump abruptly and dramatically called off the latest round of peace talks with Iran at the very last minute, leaving the fate of the ceasefire in limbo. One of the main reasons Trump gave was that he doesn't think Iran is sending credible negotiators to the table and says he has no idea who's actually in charge of the country. Today, my colleague Farnaz Fassihi takes us inside the world of Iran's leaders and explains what her reporting reveals about what they really want.
It's Monday, April 27th. Farnaz, it's wonderful to have you back on the show.

**Farnaz Fassihi** (1:38)
Thank you for having me, Natalie.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (1:40)
So what do we know about what just happened? Where we saw Trump suddenly back away from face-to-face negotiations with Iran. It almost seemed like over the weekend he kind of turned the team of American negotiators around as they were basically on their way to the airport.

**Farnaz Fassihi** (1:57)
We started this weekend thinking that Iranians and Americans were going to meet in Islamabad for a second round of negotiations. Iran's foreign minister went to Islamabad, and the US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner were scheduled to also fly to Pakistan on Saturday, and everyone anticipated another round of talks. Then we started getting mixed messages. The Iranians said, oh well, we're not meeting directly with the Americans, and the foreign minister left Pakistan, and President Trump abruptly announced on social media that he was canceling the talks and not sending his envoys to meet with the Iranians.
And now we're in a state of limbo. There's no talks. There's a unilateral ceasefire declared by President Trump without a set deadline, and the Iranians are under a sea blockade. So the situation, I think, is very fragile.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (2:52)
And what about the president's claim, which he made on social media over the weekend and he's made before, that the Iranian regime is in complete disarray and that he doesn't even know who's making the decisions in the country?

**Farnaz Fassihi** (3:05)
Well, since the start of this war, some of the big questions have been, who's running Iran? Who's making the decisions? Where is the new supreme leader, Mostafa Khamenei?
And are there divisions at the top? I spent the past month reporting these questions, talking to sources inside Iran. I interviewed 22 people inside Iran. Some of them were senior officials. Some were members of the Revolutionary Guards. Some of them know Mostafa Khamenei or his father. And all of them understand the framework of how decisions are being made in Iran and how the country is being run. And that has helped me answer this puzzle.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (3:43)
Through just extraordinarily deep reporting. So what have you learned?

**Farnaz Fassihi** (3:49)
Well, I'll tell you, in my interviews over the past month, every time I would ask that question from sources, I would say, who is making the decisions? Who's running the country?
And I would hear, sepah, sepah. Sepah means the revolutionary guards.
No one said the Ayatollah. No one said it's the supreme leader. And that was just such a difference to how things were done before the war, where the senior Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran for 37 years, always had the last word on all decisions that were critical to the state. And before the war, whenever I would ask, who's making the decision, he would say, we're waiting for Mr. Khamenei to decide. We're waiting for him to say yes or no. And now it's the generals. Since the war started, a cohort of senior revolutionary guards generals have sort of taken over running and managing the war and running the country.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (4:48)
Okay, you're saying something that's actually pretty stark, which is worth just lingering on for a moment, which is that the supreme leader is not the one calling the shots here.