On one hand, U.S. and Israeli forces have been extremely effective at eliminating Iran's leaders. On the other hand, is there anyone left who is both able and willing to ink a lasting peace deal?

In a strange way, Donald Trump may be running into one of the oldest problems in war: winning too much, too fast, in exactly the wrong place. 

The U.S. has now extended the ceasefire with Iran until Tehran submits a proposal and discussions are concluded, even after Trump said he did not want to keep extending it. Washington clearly still wants a deal. 

The problem is not just whether Iran wants one. The problem is whether the Iranian system still contains anyone with enough authority to make one, sell it internally, and enforce it afterward.

There are still people to talk to. Iran is not a smoking crater with no government left. But the old center of gravity appears to have been badly damaged. After Ali Khamenei was killed, his son Mojtaba Khamenei succeeded him — though the process was hardly so straightforward. 

Mojtaba was also badly wounded in the strike that killed his father, has remained out of public view, and has been participating in major decisions through audio conferences. Unlike his father, he does not appear to command absolute authority in the same way, and that the Revolutionary Guards have emerged as the dominant voice on strategic decisions during the war.

The AP reports that a committee-like body, the Supreme National Security Council, now appears to sit at the center of power, with parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf emerging as its public face and chief negotiator with the United States. Reuters, meanwhile, describes Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi as one of the Islamic Republic’s most powerful foreign ministers and one of the few senior figures left who could still negotiate with Washington. In other words, there are still hands on the wheel. There are just a lot more hands than before.

And that is where Trump’s success turns into a diplomatic stalemate. 

Ali Khamenei’s system was ugly, coercive, and paranoid, but it had one advantage from the regime’s point of view: when the Supreme Leader decided, the argument was over. Under him, rival factions could posture and maneuver, but he could still impose a line. Without that unifying authority, any negotiation becomes much harder. A concession can be called treason. A pause can be called weakness. A tactical retreat can be framed as surrender. 

In March, that the split between harder-line and more pragmatic factions was already showing, and that even then it was unclear whether any successor would wield enough authority to stamp out factional disputes.

We have already seen glimpses of that problem in real time. 

The current leadership includes hard-liners such as Saeed Jalili and Guard commanders alongside President Masoud Pezeshkian and Qalibaf, and that the weekend dispute over the Strait of Hormuz exposed serious differences over how much to concede to Washington. Araqchi announced the strait was opening as part of the ceasefire arrangement; hours later the U.S. said the blockade would continue; then Iran’s military said the strait was closed again. 

Iranian media close to the Guard criticized Araqchi, and his office had to insist that it was coordinating with higher authorities. That does not look like a regime speaking with one voice. 

Meanwhile, the pressure on the system is not easing. As of today, shipping through Hormuz remains largely frozen, with only three ships transiting in the previous 24 hours versus roughly 140 a day before the war. 

Iran’s foreign minister is calling the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports an “act of war,” and Tehran is still rejecting negotiations conducted under threat. These are not the conditions in which doves thrive. Every extra day of blockade, every delayed shipment, every public humiliation gives the anti-deal faction another argument.

And then there is the other power struggle — the one inside Iran itself. ABC reported this week that the regime is still escalating its crackdown on dissent, with arrests, executions, threats against journalists and dissidents, and the seizure of assets belonging to critics abroad. That matters because regimes confident in their own legitimacy do not usually behave this way. A system that is secure bargains from strength. A system that fears its own people lashes inward while talking outward. 

The more brittle the regime becomes at home, the more likely it is that compromise abroad will be treated by hard-liners as an existential danger rather than a strategic choice.

The U.S. and Israel appear to have been effective enough to shatter the old hierarchy without fully replacing it with a new, settled one. There are still negotiators. There are still institutions. There is still a regime. But a lasting peace requires more than a signature on paper. It requires a chain of authority strong enough to make the bureaucracy obey, the Guard comply, and the hard-liners swallow their rage. That may be the hardest part of all.

It may even be impossible.

America may now be trying to make peace not with a single ruler, but with a wounded regime whose factions are still deciding which one of them gets to speak for Iran.

(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)