Iran's Pezeshkian and IRGC Leadership Clash Over War Strategy Amid Economic Strain

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Iran’s civilian leadership and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are locked in a deepening dispute over wartime decision-making and economic management, according to analyses carried by The Jerusalem Post drawing on Iran International. President Masoud Pezeshkian has publicly and privately pressed for a ceasefire and for executive authority to rest with the elected government, while senior IRGC figures, including Ahmad Vahidi, have resisted restoring that authority and have expanded the Corps’ direct role in political and strategic choices. The reporting frames the confrontation against an economy under severe pressure, with sharp rises in food prices and a large share of the population living below the absolute poverty line.

Coverage Comparison

The Jerusalem Post has published two closely related accounts based on Iran International’s reporting. One emphasizes a broader structural shift: an internal power struggle in which the IRGC is consolidating control as the economy edges toward collapse, describing the moment as among the most significant political upheavals since the 1979 revolution and attributing it to the convergence of war, economic crisis, and a leadership vacuum. That account stresses disputes over senior appointments and the sidelining of civilian institutions.

A second Jerusalem Post report focuses more tightly on the personal and institutional clash between Pezeshkian and IRGC chief Ahmad Vahidi. It details Pezeshkian’s criticism of the Guard’s regional posture and his demand that war-related executive decisions be made by the government rather than the IRGC—a demand the report says Vahidi rejected. The same piece conveys the IRGC’s counter-criticism that Pezeshkian failed to deliver structural reforms before the current conflict. Both accounts rely on the London-based outlet Iran International and Iranian sources it cites; neither presents independent on-the-ground verification beyond that chain of attribution. Statistical claims about prices and poverty appear in the more detailed clash-focused report and are attributed to state-affiliated institutions and economists.

Key Claims

• Iran’s leadership is facing an internal power struggle as the economy edges toward collapse, with the IRGC increasingly consolidating control, according to Iran International analysis reported by The Jerusalem Post.
• President Masoud Pezeshkian has warned that without a ceasefire, Iran’s economy could completely collapse within weeks, as reported by The Jerusalem Post citing that analysis.
• The IRGC is exercising more direct influence over political and strategic decisions and is increasingly sidelining civilian leadership, per the same multi-source framing in The Jerusalem Post.
• Pezeshkian is clashing with IRGC chief Ahmad Vahidi over the economic and social impact of the war with the United States and Israel, according to a Jerusalem Post report citing Iran International and Iranian sources.
• Pezeshkian criticized the IRGC’s approach of raising regional tensions and attacked the notion that neighboring countries should be targeted, warning of long-term damage to Iran’s economy; he demanded that executive war decisions rest with the government, a demand Vahidi did not accept, the report states.
• In response, the IRGC criticized Pezeshkian’s inability to implement structural reforms before the war, according to the same account.
• Food prices have risen by at least 50 percent compared with pre-war levels, with some staples increasing rapidly, as cited in The Jerusalem Post’s Iran International-based reporting.
• More than 40 percent of the population lives below the absolute poverty line, with the figure exceeding 50 percent in the capital, according to figures attributed to state-affiliated institutions and some economists in that reporting.
• Factories face acute shortages of raw materials, internet disruptions have halted services, and salaries and benefits for a large segment of government employees have not been paid regularly, according to messages from government employees cited by Iran International.

Perspectives

From the vantage point of the civilian government as portrayed in the Iran International material, the priority is halting further economic freefall. Pezeshkian’s reported warning that the economy could collapse within weeks without a ceasefire, and his insistence that war decisions belong to the executive rather than the IRGC, reflect an argument that continued military escalation and the Guard’s dominance over strategy are incompatible with stabilizing prices, production, and public payrolls. That perspective treats the war’s social costs—poverty rates above 40 percent nationally and food staples up by half or more—as evidence that a different policy mix is required.

From the IRGC’s reported standpoint, the Corps is unwilling to defer to civilian institutions it views as ineffective. The analysis describes resistance to restoring authority to those institutions, tighter IRGC control over key posts, and blocking of candidates for sensitive roles. The Guard’s criticism of Pezeshkian for failing to enact structural reforms before the war reframes the crisis as a legacy of governmental weakness rather than a product of IRGC strategy. In this telling, expanded military stewardship of political and strategic decisions is a response to institutional failure, not its cause.

A third, structural reading offered by the Iran International analysis and relayed by The Jerusalem Post situates the clash in a longer drift away from the Islamic Republic’s traditional balance between elected offices and unelected power centers. War, economic distress, and a leadership vacuum are described as jointly pushing the system toward a more overtly military-dominated order—the most significant such upheaval, the analysis claims, since 1979. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and other political actors appear in illustrative coverage of pro-IRGC displays, underscoring how segments of the formal political class align with the Guard amid the struggle.

Temporal context in the source material places the clash-focused report in late March 2026 and the broader power-struggle analysis in early April 2026, against a backdrop of several weeks of war involving the United States and Israel. Figures on poverty and prices are presented as current relative to that fighting, not as pre-war baselines alone; the 50 percent food-price increase is explicitly compared with pre-war levels, while the poverty statistics are given as present-day estimates. Readers should note that both Jerusalem Post articles depend heavily on a single opposition-linked outlet’s sourcing; the underlying claims about private conversations, appointment blocks, and exact economic thresholds have not been independently corroborated in the material provided.

Together, the reporting depicts a regime under simultaneous external military pressure and internal institutional strain, with the elected presidency and the IRGC advancing incompatible diagnoses of how Iran reached this point and who should steer policy next. Whether the outcome is a ceasefire-oriented recalibration under fuller civilian authority or a further militarization of decision-making remains unresolved in the available accounts.