Why war has made Iran's leadership frictions more 'consequential'

Masoud Pezeshkian's reported tensions with Iranian hardline conservatives have been at the centre of scrutiny. (Getty: Iranian Presidency/Handout/Anadolu)

When Masoud Pezeshkian ascended to the Iranian presidency in 2024, he portrayed himself as a modern leader for a new era.

Battlefields, hospital rooms and Iran's intense political arena had been the backdrop to his rise to power, but the now 71-year-old former cardiac surgeon was seen as less hardline and more "moderate" than his rival.

Nicknamed the Butcher of Tehran, Mr Pezeshkian's predecessor, Ebrahim Raisi, was a ruthless politician whose relentless climb to the top was cut short when his helicopter crashed into a Tabriz mountain during bad weather.

The new president, on the other hand, was a low-profile reformer who frequently insisted that he was "not a special person".

Backed by supreme leader Ali Khamenei, Mr Pezeshkian expressed a desire to cooperate with the West, insisting Iran would only thrive if it was cohesive.

"We do not wish to be the cause of instability in the Middle East," he said in interviews and meetings in the early days of his presidency.

Yet as one of the most powerful men in the country, he faced scrutiny from an army of conservative critics who had favoured a hardliner for the role.

After a wave of assassinations targeting top Iranian officials and a supreme leader who has not been seen in public since the war began, a key question has emerged: who is really running Iran?

Two years later, Mr Pezeshkian is now caught up in a swirl of rumour and intrigue following a brutal war with the United States and Israel.

Iran International, a Persian-language news channel, reported earlier this week the Iranian president had resigned from his post over an alleged power struggle between his government and the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Iranian state media were quick to deny the report, which could not be independently verified by the ABC, and called it "rumour-mongering" by a foreign media outlet.

However, there is no denying the unconfirmed resignation report comes at a turbulent moment for Iran's regime given the death of its supreme leader in February in a deadly strike from Israel and the United States.

The consequent war between the three countries has killed many other senior Iranian figures and sent some of those who survived into hiding.

Iran is, at the same time, reeling from water and energy shortages, international sanctions, inflation, weak economic growth and the military defeat of most of its regional allies.

"The regime is clearly go