Iran's Parliament Speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, has warned of divisions within the country's political establishment over how to handle the war with the US, as officials disagree over the balance between military pressure and negotiations.
"In the past seven months, we have shown that we are not defenceless in the face of aggression," Mr Ghalibaf said in a speech to parliament on Sunday. "Our logic in confronting the enemy is intelligent advancement and imposing the will of the Iranian nation," the hardliner said.
He added that there were two opposing approaches within Iran's political and intellectual circles.
"First, there is a view that speaks of war but has no horizon or mechanism for bringing it to an empowered end," Mr Ghalibaf said. "This view, by rejecting any interaction and diplomacy, and without calculating the country's capabilities, effectively pushes the country toward attrition and endless war."
He then criticised what he described as the opposite position.
"On the opposite side is a current that suffers from the error of underestimating national power; it considers Iran weak and, by spreading fear, prescribes surrender and acceptance of the enemy’s unilateral conditions," he said, adding both approaches amounted to "strategic errors" and could weaken Iran.
Mr Ghalibaf was speaking only weeks after a public dispute between himself and Hossein Shariatmadari, editor-in-chief of the hardline Kayhan newspaper, a prominent ultraconservative figure appointed directly by the late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Mr Shariatmadari said in August that western-oriented groups and reformists were using Mr Ghalibaf's comments on negotiations to portray him as moving away from the revolutionary camp. He urged the Speaker to make his "revolutionary position" clearer.
Competing approaches
At the time, Mr Ghalibaf responded in a two-page open letter rejecting the suggestion that negotiations represented a retreat.
"Negotiation … has neither intrinsic value nor is it taboo. It is neither absolutely good nor absolutely evil," Mr Ghalibaf wrote.
He said negotiations should be used to advance Iran's national interests, secure its rights and consolidate what he described as the gains of resistance.
"Talk when necessary, and fight when necessary," he wrote.
Mr Ghalibaf has continued to defend military pressure while arguing that diplomacy should be used alongside it.
The disagreement comes as the future of the Strait of Hormuz remains a central issue in the conflict. Iran has discussed arrangements with Oman to resume some commercial traffic.
The issue has divided Iranian officials over how far the country can use the strait as leverage while limiting the economic costs of keeping it closed.
Iran's Supreme National Security Council chief Mohsen Rezaei has taken a harder position. He said that if the economic war continued, Tehran would prevent any oil exports.
Mr Ghalibaf said the two competing approaches inside Iran could ultimately produce the same result: a prolonged crisis on one side or concessions to the US on the other.
His comments suggest the dispute is over how Iran should pursue its existing policy of resistance, rather than whether to abandon it.
