Tehran | BETH

Contradictory statements within the Iranian leadership have revealed signs of a division in the official stance toward the attacks that targeted neighboring countries, amid military escalation linked to the confrontation with the United States and Israel.

While Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian offered an apology to neighboring countries for the attacks that occurred during the past few days, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei, head of the judiciary and a member of the transitional leadership council, issued different remarks in which he threatened to continue targeting what he described as “points of aggression.”

Ejei said on Saturday:

“Strong attacks on these targets will continue. This is the strategy currently being adopted, and the government and the other pillars of the ruling system are united behind it.”

Ejei also accused some neighboring countries of placing their capabilities at the disposal of what he called “the enemy,” referring to the ongoing U.S. and Israeli operations against Iran.

BETH Reading

The contrast between Pezeshkian’s conciliatory tone and Ejei’s hardline statements reflects a clear struggle between two directions within the Iranian system:
one seeking to contain tensions with regional countries, and another pushing toward expanding the confrontation under the banner of deterrence.

This contradiction comes at a time when Iran is facing escalating military strikes and increasing regional and international pressure, making the internal discourse more sensitive between calculations of escalation and the requirements of reducing isolation.

Who Is Pushing Hardline Clerics Toward Escalation?

What drives them toward escalation is not a single factor, but the intersection of three dangerous motivations:
fear, ideological doctrine, and the struggle for survival within the system.

When the regime faces military and political pressure, the hardline current tends to raise the level of threats not because it always holds the best options, but because it fears that retreat will be interpreted as a sign of weakness.

In such systems, escalation sometimes becomes a means of protecting prestige internally before it becomes a tool of external deterrence.

Hardliners also do not necessarily view de-escalation as a purely national interest; they may see it as a loss of influence within the structure of power.

Therefore, whenever the voices of pragmatists rise, the rhetoric of extremists rises in parallel, as if the battle is not only with the outside world, but also over the identity of decision-making within Iran itself.

Conclusion

This appears to be the scene: fear of losing control has become a primary driver of escalation.

Yet the deeper question remains suspended:
Do those figures realize that the era of power in whose name they speak has already ended, and that restoring it is no longer possible even if they were to abandon what remains of their slogans and principles?

Power that lives on escalation may delay the fall of the moment… but it rarely changes the direction of history.

Some extremist clerics are not driven to escalation by the logic of power, but by fear of the exposure of weakness, fear of losing control, and a political addiction to managing crises with fire.