Hard-Liners in Iran Want to Keep Fighting America
With much of their leadership killed in the war, Iran’s conservatives have sought to fill the void and intensify the fight against the United States.
The striking prominence of red flags — a Shiite Muslim symbol for vengeance — among the sea of mourners attending the weeklong funeral of Iran’s late supreme leader was considered a none-too-subtle statement that the country should continue the war with the United States.
That is a demand of the ultra-hard-liners in the Islamic Republic, who want to maintain its 47-year confrontation with Washington. Analysts saw the flags as a telling example of the jockeying for position amid the newly fluid politics in Iran, ever since the war launched by the United States and Israel in February ushered in political uncertainty in Tehran by decapitating the leadership.
The hard-liners “are attempting to use the atmosphere of mourning, national insecurity and opposition to negotiations to narrow the range of politically acceptable debate and to portray compromise as both strategically dangerous and morally illegitimate,” said Saeid Golkar, a professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, who studies Iran’s security forces.
In any case, prospects for a compromise dimmed last week when the United States and Iran resumed military strikes. The fighting was prompted by the unsettled question of the extent of Iranian control over vital shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz.
The collapse of the cease-fire jeopardized the memorandum of understanding that the two sides signed on June 17 as a blueprint for future peace talks, including the fate of Iran’s nuclear program.
