Repeated rumours of President Pezeshkian’s resignation serve rival power islands, amplified by political bloggers, in a fragmented system where real authority lies beyond the elected government.
Every few weeks, rumours of Masoud Pezeshkian’s resignation from the presidency heat up: over talks with the United States, the hijab law, internet filtering, the removal of Mohammad Javad Zarif, and more. And yet, in the Islamic Republic’s fractured, island-like structure of power, even the possible resignation of the president does not necessarily mean a major change in the power pyramid.
Over the past 15 months, the issue of Pezeshkian’s resignation has repeatedly been raised by the media and political actors—from critics close to the Revolutionary Guards to segments of the reformists—and each time denied. News agencies and websites close to the hardliners on the one hand, and parts of the reformist media on the other, have at various points floated the scenario of “resignation and early elections.”
The peak of this wave came during the 12-day war between Iran and Israel in Khordad and Tir 1404 (June–July 2025); a war that made the already abnormal conditions of governance in the Islamic Republic even more abnormal. During those days, popular Telegram channels and social media accounts circulated rumours about “a request for Pezeshkian’s resignation” or “the Supreme Leader’s dissatisfaction with the government’s performance in managing the war.” These rumours were denied by the government’s Information Council, which stressed that the president was “acting fully within the framework of the Commander-in-Chief’s policies.”
The pattern was repeated in the following months: first, a rumour about internal disputes or external pressure for change at the top of the government appears on social networks; then channels close to certain factions amplify it; and in the end, the government’s media team or official authorities are forced to “deny something that has never been formally announced.”
A New Wave of Rumours
The new wave of rumours is unintelligible without taking into account the case of Mohammad Reza Aref, the first vice president. In recent weeks, an MP, in an open warning on the parliament floor, claimed that “Aref’s son holds German citizenship and therefore his position as first vice president is illegal.”
This argument refers back to the “Law on the Appointment of Individuals to Sensitive Positions,” passed in 2022 (1401), which prohibits the appointment to certain state positions—including the vice presidency—of people whose spouse or children have dual nationality.
Previously, this law led to Mohammad Javad Zarif’s removal from the government. In the fourteenth administration, Zarif had been proposed as vice president and briefly joined the administration, but ultimately stepped down under pressure over his children’s citizenship and opponents’ invocation of the “sensitive positions” law.
So far, Zarif has been the most prominent “victim” of this law. Now the same template is being used to exert pressure on Aref.
Over recent weeks, Hamid Rasaei, a hardline member of parliament, has used public speeches to raise the question of Aref’s child’s dual nationality and asked his colleagues why the same strictness applied to Zarif is not being applied to the first vice president:
“If the law was enforced on Zarif, it must be enforced on others as well.”
In parallel with these pressures, rumours about the “imminent resignation of Mohammad Reza Aref” have been published in news channels. One such channel wrote that Aref “is on his way out,” and that Eskandar Momeni or Eshaq Jahangiri will likely replace him as first vice president.
The circulation of this news was quickly met with reactions from hardline media and outlets close to official institutions; the Fars news agency denied the report of Aref’s resignation and announced his “retention in office.”
At the official level, it was Elias Hazrati, head of the government’s Information Council, who declared:
“What is being said about the resignation of some members of the government—from the president himself to the first vice president and ministers—is absolutely untrue.”
He said that there is no dossier on the table for changes at the top of the administration or in the first vice presidency, and that the government intends to continue its work with the same line-up.
The Zarif–Aref difference: where Khamenei did not remain silent
In Zarif’s case, the Supreme Leader effectively kept a tacit, approving silence over his departure from government. He did not publicly support him, nor did he take a clear stance against the parliament’s interpretation of the “sensitive positions” law. Zarif’s exit from the administration was finalized in a silence that looked more like a green light.
With Aref, the story is different. In his 6 September 2025 (16 Shahrivar 1404) meeting with the president and cabinet members, Ali Khamenei, after praising Pezeshkian’s “dense and useful work,” specifically named his first vice president and said:
“I also wanted to thank Dr. Aref, whose follow-up meetings regarding the tasks decided upon—I insist, must not be forgotten or neglected. He is truly making an effort, working, and we are aware of the extensive activity he is undertaking in this regard.”
This level of direct and positive reference to Aref—at a time when parts of the parliament and media were calling for his dismissal based on the same “sensitive positions” law—sent a clear signal that the Leader did not wish to maintain the same distance from Aref that he had kept in Zarif’s case.
Overall, when the first victim of this law has already been pushed out of government, and when the Leader, in the case of a second potential victim, publicly thanks him for his “broad efforts and activity,” the present rumours of Pezeshkian’s resignation look less like a real scenario for changing the president and more like a tool for exerting pressure and bargaining over Aref and his close circle.
The government and the “personal branding” experts
Still, one question remains: what explains the excessive repetition of the Pezeshkian-resignation scenario?
To understand this repetition, we need to ask how “real” the government itself is in this structure—and how much of it is merely a formal substitute. The question, in other words, is not only whether Pezeshkian will resign or not, but in what kind of government such a resignation would take place in the first place.
Any outside observer can interpret the current state of “government,” in the broad sense, and the “administration” as the executive arm of governance from their own angle. If we try to draw an overall picture from these interpretations, what relation does the administration headed by Masoud Pezeshkian have to that institution which is supposed to secure the public good and, in Aristotle’s terms, lead citizens toward eudaimonia—a good and flourishing life? Which problems has the Pezeshkian administration solved? Which hardships has it eased? Which conflicts has it mediated?
One observer, interpreting the current situation of the executive branch, says that the Islamic Republic has entered a “crisis of non-government” and formulates his views like this:
“We are faced with a phenomenon of non-government. What do I mean by that? It means that we are witnessing a competition between different governments within the ruling structure. The concern of each of these governments is to consolidate its own position in the power structure… We are dealing with several governments that are constantly negating one another or actively working against each other.”
These are the words of Abbas Akhoundi, former Minister of Roads in Hassan Rouhani’s government, who has lately preferred to be seen as a “governance theorist”. His first experience in politics was as deputy interior minister for political affairs at age 25—back when his brother-in-law was interior minister.
There are others saying similar things—people who are “the forerunners of the system,” those with “deep ties” to the establishment, who have carved out their own islands of interest within the regime and now base their “personal branding” on being “governance theorists.”
Policy Bloggers
A new job has emerged in the Islamic Republic that might be called that of the “policy blogger.”
These bloggers are a collection of former mid- and high-level managers who now present themselves as “wise old owls,” each warning the system in some particular field.
Yet whether they are nestled at the heart of government or standing outside it, they all describe roughly the same picture: the state of the Islamic Republic is incapable of solving its “system of problems.” It can do little about the water, electricity, and gas crises; it cannot lift sanctions; it cannot restore its own security, provide security for the people, or revive even a minimal sense of stability.
In this archipelago of disorder, how much can Pezeshkian’s resigning or not resigning be a “major factor”? As a rule, the resignation of a president, even in a small country, is “big news,” but not every big news item necessarily translates into “big change.”
One of those who has spoken of Pezeshkian’s resignation is Abdolreza Davari. Once a mid-level player in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s media apparatus, he is now a political blogger among the Islamic Republic’s many political bloggers. And this is another appendage in the archipelago of disorder: political bloggers, corruption-exposure bloggers, security bloggers, geopolitics bloggers.
They are a mix of public figures, former political or media activists, middle managers in various parts of the state, and ordinary people. Thanks to social media, each acts as a content factory for news dissemination, rumour production, and, in some cases, blackmail.
Each of their social-media accounts serves one of the islands in this archipelago of disorder. They produce content to order, influence appointments and dismissals, expose one person’s corruption while justifying another’s.
Their business is booming. Many have abandoned their previous jobs and now devote themselves fully to managing these accounts. Some have offices and staff for content production. They hold meetings with government and security officials. They set lines and receive lines. They bring down a well-known opponent of their client and elevate an obscure ally.
This, too, is a new piece in the intensifying disorder of this archipelago of rival and, in many cases, mutually hostile power centres. The Islamic Republic, as a system of governance, has long been intelligible only through this fragmented structure. In such a configuration, the role and place of the president, and his relation to the real components of power, are so disjointed that one could again quote the owners of these islands of power as saying: “Let us appoint someone president without trouble and get on with our own work.”
In such an arrangement, what significance does the rumour of Pezeshkian’s resignation have? It seems that the game played by the “bloggers of the Islamic Republic” with the issue of his resignation is, more than anything else, a tool for those islands of power to reshuffle personnel, pressure the administration, and extract a larger share from the structure.
