Known as “Jebhe-ye Paydari” – or the Endurance Front – its members are often described by observers as “Super Revolutionaries” who view themselves as guardians of the values of the 1979 revolution that overthrew the pro-Western Shah before imposing an authoritarian regime rooted in Shia Islamist ideology.
“They view resistance against the United States and Israel as an eternal fight,” Hamidreza Azizi, a visiting fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told CNN. “They believe in a Shia state that needs to continue until the end of times and are quite fanatic when it comes to that religious ideology.”
“They (the US) realized that killing our leaders, commanders, and loved ones costs them nothing,” an article criticizing the talks in Raja News, which represents the Paydari Front, said. “They understood that even if they martyr our Imam (Ali Khamenei), there are still groups here willing to negotiate, shake hands with (Steve) Witkoff, (JD) Vance, and (Jared) Kushner, and smile at the killers of our martyred Imam.”
The faction is viewed as so radical that even hardliners within Iran’s conservative establishment see it as fringe. Still, “Jebhe-ye Paydari” are embedded in some of Iran’s most influential centers of power and the group boasts senior figures in Iranian media, top politicians who were once leading presidential candidates, and religious authorities who have wielded influence over past supreme leaders. It’s unclear how much support it commands, but one of its most prominent figures – former national security chief Saeed Jalili – garnered 13 million votes in the 2021 elections, finishing second.
Seven parliamentarians [see below] affiliated with the group have refused to sign a statement endorsing the negotiating team, according to Iranian media. One lawmaker affiliated with the group, Mahmoud Nabavian, was on Iran’s negotiating team in Islamabad last month but then publicly declared that negotiating over the country’s nuclear program was a “strategic mistake.” He later called for the removal of Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi from the team. The current spiritual leader is Ayatollah Mahdi Mirbaqiri, a highly influential senior cleric who was once seen as a possible candidate for Supreme Leader. He harbors “apocalyptic views,” Azizi said, and wants to hasten the end of times by encouraging “widespread fighting” and a “comprehensive clash” with the West, according to an interview he gave state media in 2019.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/05/09/middleeast/iran-conflict-politics-hardline-intl
1. Mahmoud Nabavian
2. Mohammad Taghi Naghdali
3. Mortaza Aghataherani
4. Amir Hossein Sabeti
5. Hamid Rezaei
6. RouholLAH Izvakhoh
7. Maysam Zahourian
https://t.me/entekhab_ir/363369
Iran does not know how to cash in on its victories at the right time
From the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to the aborted talks in Islamabad, the 2026 crisis reproduces a forty-year-old pattern: that of a regime structurally incapable of converting real leverage into a political outcome, prisoner of an ideological logic that transforms every tactical advantage into a dead end.
“During the Iran-Iraq war in May 1982, after the liberation of Khorramshahr, Khomeini also refused to concede a victory that had already been won. He chooses ideology over strategic interest. The conflict lasted six more years. »
In May 1982, after the liberation of Khorramshahr, Iran was in a position of strength. Iraq is proposing an immediate ceasefire with withdrawal to international borders. Saddam offers reparations. Khamenei and Mousavi are arguing for a deal. Khomeini refused. He launched the slogan: “The road to Jerusalem passes through Karbala” and transformed a victorious defensive war into an offensive ideological crusade with no real military horizon. The result: six more years, a million dead and wounded, and a capitulation wrested in 1988 that Khomeini himself described as a “cup of poison”.
The lesson has not been learned. Or rather: it could not be, because the inability to accept victory at the right time is not a miscalculation, it is a characteristic of the ideological system. The Islamic Republic operates according to a logic where confrontation is an end in itself, where “not giving in” is worth more than a measurable political gain, and where the rhetoric of permanent resistance systematically neutralizes the value of the successes achieved.
In addition to this structural pathology, in 2026, there is an unprecedented factor: the physical elimination of the Supreme Leader has decapitated the only arbitration function capable of deciding between rival factions. His presumed successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, has neither the legitimacy nor the authority to impose a costly de-escalation. The result is predictable: each opening is followed by a closure, each agreement by a questioning.
The US naval blockade of Iranian ports, in force since 13 April, is accelerating an economic suffocation that has already begun. The superimposition of the American blockade on the Iranian closure of the strait creates a devastating scissor effect: oil exports are blocked, stocks are accumulating on the island of Kharg to the point of saturating storage capacities, and the regime could soon be forced to interrupt crude production itself, a decision with technically disastrous consequences on the production fields. Each day of the status quo represents an estimated loss of more than $400 million for the Iranian economy, of which the Revolutionary Guards, the main beneficiaries of oil rents, are on the front line. For the Iranian population, it is a real-time asphyxiation.
The pragmatic voices within the regime, those who would have the lucidity to capitalize on the show of force in Hormuz to negotiate a way out of the crisis on the nuclear and sanctions issues, seem to have definitively lost their grip to the ideological bloc of the Revolutionary Guards. It is this internal defeat, more than external pressure, that condemns the regime to strategic immobility.
In 1988, Khomeini drank his cup of poison because he had no other way out. The question may no longer be whether the Islamic Republic can take its victories. But how many more deferred defeats it can afford, before her own strategic choices catch up with it for good.
https://atlantico.fr/article/decryptage/l-iran-ne-sait-pas-encaisser-ses-victoires-au-bon-moment