Factions in Iran openly fight over war’s direction amid Khamenei’s absence

When Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian told state television last week that he found it “very difficult” to reach the country’s supreme leader, it sparked fresh speculation about the whereabouts of Mojtaba Khamenei who has not been seen in public since taking over as the country’s ultimate authority in March.

By Monday, Pezeshkian told the official broadcaster that the two had in fact recently held a meeting lasting “seven or eight hours”.

“It was a very good meeting,” Pezeshkian told a reporter on the sidelines of a summit of the heads of political factions and politicians in Tehran, adding that the two discussed how to tackle worsening living standards in Iran as well as sharing that Khamenei’s most pressing concern was “unity and cohesion” in the country.

The statement came after weeks of bitter public infighting in Tehran over the conduct of the war, with calls from hardliners for Pezeshkian to resign over his support for Iran’s beleaguered peace deal with the US, and days after the under-pressure president said in a lengthy television interview that he was not going to budge.

Khamenei was hurt in the same Israeli air strike on February 28 that killed his father and predecessor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It was the opening salvo in the US-Israel war on Iran.

The extent of his injuries is unknown. Pezeshkian said on Monday that the supreme leader was in “perfect health”. But Khamenei’s absence from public life has left a vacuum in which disputes between political factions – a mainstay of Iranian life – have become more pronounced and seeped into the open.