Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf accused the United States on Wednesday of employing a calculated strategy designed to fracture the Islamic republic from within, combining economic pressure with efforts to amplify internal political divisions.
Ghalibaf, who has ascended to prominence since the outbreak of Middle East conflict and served as lead negotiator in the sole round of direct US-Iranian talks, characterized the American approach as deliberate psychological warfare. “The enemy has entered a new phase and wants to activate economic pressure and internal division through naval blockade and media hype to weaken or even make us collapse from within,” he stated, according to state television.
The parliament speaker identified the naval blockade as the centerpiece of American pressure. He argued that President Donald Trump’s public messaging deliberately constructed a false binary within Iranian society—separating the country’s leadership into “hardliners and moderates”—before weaponizing economic isolation to exploit those manufactured fault lines.
“Trump divides the country into two groups: hardliners and moderates, and then immediately talks about a naval blockade to force Iran into submission through economic pressure and internal discord,” Ghalibaf said.
Ghalibaf’s warnings reflect deep uncertainty rippling through Tehran’s power structures. The killing of numerous senior Iranian officials by US-Israeli strikes—including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—has triggered widespread international speculation about the balance of power within Iran’s government. Trump himself fueled such assessments earlier this month, declaring that Iran’s government was “seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so.”
Ghalibaf’s remedy for the perceived American strategy was unambiguous: national unity. He called on Iranians to reject divisive narratives and present a united front against external pressure. “Maintaining unity is the only solution,” he declared, implicitly suggesting that any fracturing of Iranian consensus would play directly into Washington’s hands.
(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
