Politico: The regime has multiple layers and elements that debate each other and compete for influence, especially with the supreme leader. People have been sidelined, yet for nearly five decades, the regime has held together, even during yearslong wars. It has never fractured.
Even though newly installed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei isn’t a visibly galvanizing force, that doesn’t mean there’s a splintering.
“There are undoubtedly serious debates within the Iranian regime, but that’s not new. Mojtaba is a wild card because he is new and out of sight, but there’s no public sign yet of unprecedented or destabilizing regime splits or fractures,” one U.S. official familiar with the Trump team’s Middle East policy acknowledged to me…