The wave of Iranian nationalism is drowning its diplomats

Government, Shaken by the protests Earlier this year, and still deeply unpopular among most of the Iranian public, it stoked patriotic sentiment to rally support during the war’s toughest days and recently heightened it during the funeral of its slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Now, hard-line lawmakers, broadcasters and other vocal groups are taking advantage of those sentiments to engage Tehran’s negotiators and limit their ability to cut a deal with the US.

This dynamic is contributing to the U.S. inability to open the Strait of Hormuz, the most immediate goal of the preliminary agreement to end the war that President Trump signed about a month ago and one that nationalist critics say sells out Iran’s interests.

Iran agreed to open the strait to traffic within 30 days. Instead, it is Ships were fired upon repeatedly To enforce the hardliners’ claim that Tehran controls the waterway. Deepening the impasse, Trump on Monday announced its re-imposition America blockades Iranian portsIn hopes of pressuring the regime to reopen the strait, the United States launched strikes against Iran for the third consecutive night.

Efforts by the US and mediator Qatar to restart talks and advance an interim agreement over the weekend collapsed when the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps resumed attacks and announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

On Saturday, Mahmoud Nabavian, an Iranian parliamentarian and former member of the negotiating team, said the demand to negotiate over the future governance of Hormuz was a “clear and obvious weakness” of the deal. The Revolutionary Guard, he said, “will fulfill the authority of the Iranian nation over the Strait of Hormuz and will exercise exclusive control over the Strait of Hormuz, no matter what happens.”

Analysts say the Revolutionary Guard is encouraging such sentiments to remain on the waterways and maintain the upper hand at home.

“They think that as long as they can rule Hormuz, they will continue to make decisions, both in the US and internally,” said Mostafa Pakzad, who advises foreign companies on Iranian geopolitics. “The IRGC hopes that the threat of foreign attack… will motivate some people to put chips on their numbers. Nationalism is a convenient temporary sentiment to cling to.”

The US and mediators say any efforts by Iranian diplomats to reach agreement on governance of the strait are being thwarted by hardliners. Iranian diplomats have told mediators they would like to reach a deal but their hands are tied.

They have pressure on the streets too. In Regime-arranged funeral ceremony for Khamenei’s burial Last week, huge crowds unfurled huge banners that read, “Kill Trump.” President Massoud Pezeshkian, a moderate, was greeted with chants of “death to generalists” and “death to traitors”.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was chased by the mob carrying red flags symbolizing revenge and described as insulting because he was attacked with an unknown object. A government spokesperson later condemned one group for chanting divisive slogans targeting the president and the country’s negotiating team.

A few days ago, state broadcaster IRIB, which has long been managed by hardliners, suddenly removed chief negotiator and parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf after he tried to raise the issue that a former hardline president of Iran had also negotiated with the US.

Khamenei’s funeral has also sparked calls to avenge his death – not only through military action against the US and Israel, but by seeking out those responsible. One Khamenei killed in Israeli airstrike and his family members at the beginning of the war.

On Monday, Abbas Moghtadei, vice chairman of the parliament’s National Security Commission, said Iran had the right and ability to take action against individuals and organizations that ordered or planned the attacks.

Hamshahri, a newspaper published by the hardline municipal government of the capital Tehran, included poster-style images of targets including Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and several European leaders.

The slain supreme leader’s son Mojtaba Khamenei, who took over the post after his father’s assassination but did not attend his funeral, has joined the calls for vengeance.

“We have a list of criminals who killed our leaders and people in the last two wars,” he said on social media on Saturday. “The death of these criminals and murderers will not be a natural death in bed.”

The Revolutionary Guard and its allies have been helped by Mojtaba Khamenei’s public absence and his ambiguous stance on negotiations. The new supreme leader has said he is not in favor of negotiations with the US, but allows them to proceed as long as President Pezeshkian takes responsibility for their outcome.

“Mojtaba signaled to Iranian diplomats that they could try it but it would go nowhere,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “This conflicts with the negotiators’ statements which suggest that the path to survival lies through tension rather than engagement.”

Analysts say the propaganda effort seeks to broaden the regime’s support base beyond religious conservatives by emphasizing a strict moral code to revive patriotism among parts of the population angered by US and Israeli attacks during the war. It often featured women in roles that were not permitted by clerics in previous times.

In footage posted in mid-June, state media showed a member of the Revolutionary Guard teaching heavily lipsticked women how to operate AK-47 assault rifles. In late May, the Iranian Defense Ministry’s news agency, DEFA, showed a female officer in full camouflage at a meeting of military advisers who had gathered to discuss the expansion of the conflict beyond the Middle East.

A 40-year-old female teacher who joined Anti-hijab protests in 2022 and later stopped wearing the veil, saying she had recently attended a pro-regime rally in Tehran.

“I saw many girls whose clothing previously would have been frowned upon by the government – ​​topless, wearing blouses and pants, with manicured nails,” he said. They were waving the Iranian flag. The women were joined by male university students who were wearing tattoos and T-shirts, the regime’s objection to Western attire. They chanted, using an honorific title, “We are the soldiers of Sayyid Mojtaba.”

Last week, a 34-year-old Tehran-based startup entrepreneur who has long opposed the regime posted a photo of himself posing proudly in uniform after joining the army.

During the 2022 protests, security forces beat him so badly that he could not move for several days. He was tear gassed during protests in January and was optimistically awaiting war, thinking the regime was about to be overthrown.

But he changed his mind after his uncle’s house in Tehran was destroyed in the early days of the war and he struggled to reach his former girlfriend, who worked in a civilian ministry near a targeted site. She survived.

“America had pretended to support human rights,” he said. Then, “he said that a civilization is going to be destroyed, not a regime.”

The regime came into the conflict in a weak position. The protests that began in December under the pressure of the deepening economic crisis transformed into a call for the overthrow of the system. Polls consistently showed that more than 20% of Iranians did not support clerical rule.

Dissatisfaction with the government still runs deep. For now, it is benefiting from a resurgence of nationalist sentiment that makes the idea of ​​compromise with the US difficult.

“The war has produced the opposite result that Israel and the United States intended,” said Sina Tousi, an Iran-focused fellow at the Center for International Policy, a Washington think tank. “Rather than leading to collapse or mass defections, it has strengthened the system’s more nationalist structure and temporarily broadened its social base.”

Write to Benoit Faucon here benoit.faucon@wsj.com