Death to Araghchi, Hail Netanyahu!
“The hardliners gathered in Tehran too; wishing for their triumph!” This reaction from a figure affiliated with monarchist opposition factions captures a prevalent sentiment across anti-diplomacy social media channels. Their rhetoric matches the exact slogans shouted by domestic hardliners protesting against Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf, Foreign Minister Araghchi, and any diplomatic engagement in the streets of Tehran and Mashhad—a startling convergence of extremes uniting to sabotage a diplomatic breakthrough.
The motivation within the monarchist opposition is transparent: they recognize that a diplomatic impasse is precisely the scenario Benjamin Netanyahu desires. Their calculation is that sabotaging diplomacy will unleash unconstrained military aggression against Iran, devastating the country's foundations in the reckless hope of triggering regime change.
On the other side of the spectrum stand domestic hardliners, who harbor the exact same ambition: the total collapse of negotiations. While their public rhetoric relies on ideological slogans and vows of perpetual confrontation until the destruction of America and Israel, this is merely a cosmetic facade. Their opposition to diplomatic solutions is driven by a domestic political imperative: factional monopolism.
Recent history demonstrates that hardliners harbor no principled objection to negotiations per se. The very faction that branded the 2015 JCPOA as "pure national ruin" and took to the streets in shrouds promptly pivoted upon capturing the presidency under Ebrahim Raisi, claiming they sought an agreement "better than the JCPOA"—an achievement they insisted only they were qualified to deliver.
Their conduct bears an ironic resemblance to Donald Trump’s strategy. Just as Trump shredded the JCPOA not out of opposition to diplomacy, but to secure a grand bargain carrying his personal brand above Obama’s legacy, Iranian hardline lobbies blocked the Rouhani administration from finalizing sanctions relief in its closing months. They obstructed diplomacy under the delusion that they would personally emerge as the champions of economic liberation. The consequence of this coordinated intransigence between Trump and his domestic ideological counterparts was pushing Iran down the economic and security precipice we experience today.
The decision-making formula of domestic hardliners has always relied on a crude metric: "We must make decisions that make the enemy cry out in pain!" Yet in practice, they deploy this metric not against foreign adversaries, but against their own domestic political competitors and the Iranian populace. Whether targeting moderate reformers or the broader public, policies are calibrated so that domestic citizens feel the distress.
The culmination of this governing logic since the early 2000s has been advancing the strategic objectives of Iran's fiercest geopolitical foes. By manufacturing perpetual domestic polarization over lifestyle choices and internet freedoms, domestic hardliners create outcomes that even foreign adversaries could not easily orchestrate: leaving Iranian citizens suffering, while Netanyahu celebrates.