Iran's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has told colleagues that Monday's missile and drone strikes on the United Arab Emirates were "completely irresponsible" and were carried out "without the government's knowledge or coordination," according to two sources close to his office who spoke to Iran International. He called the IRGC's pattern of escalation with regional neighbors "madness" and warned of "potentially irreversible consequences." [1] He has requested an urgent meeting with Mojtaba Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, to demand an immediate halt to IRGC attacks on Gulf states. [3]
The reporting, published in Tehran time on the night of May 4 and updated through May 5, has now been carried by World Israel News, Turkiye Today, Life News Agency, and Reuters wire — but it has not been confirmed by the Iranian presidency or the IRGC. Iran International, which is opposition-aligned and based in London, cited "sources close to the presidency." The same outlet had reported on April 7 a sharp confrontation between Pezeshkian and Hossein Taeb, a figure close to Mojtaba, in which the president accused IRGC chief commander Ahmad Vahidi and Khatam al-Anbiya commander Ali Abdollahi of "acting unilaterally" and steering the country toward "a huge catastrophe."
The paper's Tuesday account of the day's diplomacy read Pezeshkian and Mojtaba as hardening the rhetorical register as Trump's Project Freedom escort operation crossed into permanent posture. The same day's brief on the IRGC's drone strike on Fujairah noted that the UAE intercepted three Iranian missiles and that one Iranian projectile was reportedly intercepted by an Israeli Iron Dome battery operating in the Gulf. What Wednesday's reporting on Pezeshkian's reaction adds — and what today's lead does not duplicate — is that the IRGC ran the operation past the civilian government, and the civilian government did not authorize it.
The structural fact is that any U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding signed by Witkoff and Kushner depends on the civilian cabinet's signature being meaningful. Pezeshkian's standing to sign anything has been an open question for weeks. The April 7 Iran International story suggested that his cabinet appointments — including the intelligence minister and the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council — were vetoed by Vahidi and the IRGC and that Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr was installed as SNSC secretary "despite his dissatisfaction." The May 4-5 reporting now suggests something further: that the IRGC is conducting offensive operations against neighboring states without informing the civilian executive at all. If true, that is not a delegation problem. It is a parallel-government problem.
The Telegraph's Akhtar Makoii argued in a Tuesday analysis that Trump and Mojtaba have "more in common than they realize" — that both are "projecting we are winning" while their actual position is one of stalemate, internal fracture, and economic pressure. [2] The framing held by the time the MOU papers reached Witkoff. Iran's currency, the rial, holds at 1.83 million per dollar; CPI prints 73.5 percent year-on-year. Mohsen Zanganeh, a member of the parliamentary economic committee close to Pezeshkian, has been warning publicly of "economic collapse" if the IRGC continues kinetic strikes on Gulf infrastructure. Pezeshkian himself, per Iran International's sources, fears U.S. retaliation against Iranian energy and economic infrastructure that "could lead to widespread destruction and an irreversible collapse in livelihoods." [1]
The Jerusalem Post, citing the same sources, reported that Pezeshkian "reportedly believes Iran still has a narrow window to salvage the ceasefire through diplomacy" and "wants authority to signal to international mediators that Tehran is ready to resume negotiations." [3] The phrase "wants authority" is the point. The president of the Islamic Republic does not, in this account, currently have authority to direct the country's military posture. He is asking the Supreme Leader's son to grant it.
Several questions follow. The first: does the meeting with Mojtaba happen, and is there a public readout? Iranian state media has not addressed the reporting at all. Mizan, Tasnim, and Fars have run no item denying or confirming the rift. The IRGC's official channels — the @sepahcybery Telegram and the Sepah News website — issued nothing on May 5. The silence is itself a position. The second question: does any senior cleric back Pezeshkian publicly? The Iran International reporting from late April included a regional source who described "an ideological collapse" of the velayat-e faqih, with traditional clerics being sidelined by what the source called "the Guards' military-intelligence apparatus." The U.S.-led war's pressure has accelerated a transition that began with the Supreme Leader's death in March and Mojtaba's elevation. The civilian government has been losing executive control on a slope. Today's reporting locates the bottom of the slope.
The third question is the consequence question. If the IRGC executed the May 4 UAE strike without civilian authorization, the U.S. national-security architecture has to decide what an Iranian signature means. The Witkoff-Kushner MOU process assumes the civilian president can deliver implementation. Pezeshkian's reported statement — that escalation continues "without the government's knowledge or coordination" — is the public, on-record version of an assumption American negotiators have been making privately for months. Trump's Monday Truth Social post, which the lead's account references, said Iran was "seriously fractured." It was. The reporting confirms it from the Iranian side.
The fourth question is the most uncomfortable. If Pezeshkian cannot deliver the IRGC, who can? Mojtaba's authority over Vahidi has not been publicly tested. The Telegraph's analysis argued that Mojtaba and Trump are both leaders whose declared posture exceeds their operational control. The post-March transition concentrated formal authority in Mojtaba; the wartime IRGC has accumulated the operational autonomy. American negotiators are now talking to a country whose civilian president cannot sign for what its military does, and whose Supreme Leader inherited a chain of command that may be answering to itself.
Iran International has reported all of this for weeks. Today's note adds the on-record date — May 4 — and the on-record words: "completely irresponsible," "madness." The civilian-military split in Tehran is not new. It is now public. What the next 72 hours produce — the Mojtaba meeting, any IRGC response, any cabinet readout — will be the first test of whether the civilian architecture still convenes.
-- YOSEF STERN, Jerusalem