Pezeshkian’s push for peace that never got off the ground

On Saturday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian offered what sounded like an olive branch. “I apologize to neighboring countries, we have no enmity toward them,” he said, adding that Iran “must work with its neighbors to guarantee security and peace.”

The apology was designed to ease the strain on a government buckling under the weight of its own military adventurism — strikes launched by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iranian armed forces against Gulf Cooperation Council member states that had explicitly refused to allow their territory to be used in the US-Israeli confrontation with Iran.

Pezeshkian’s olive branch came packaged with a concrete announcement: the “interim leadership council” had resolved to suspend attacks on neighboring countries unless strikes on Iran were launched from their soil. Gulf capitals took notice. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said that GCC states had been working collectively on a joint response affirming their desire to see the Iranian president’s words translated into action. “While we were holding those discussions with our GCC colleagues,” he said pointedly, “those countries were being attacked.”

That contradiction swallowed the initiative whole.

The initiative was exposed for what it was: a presidential declaration that the IRGC had no intention of honoring

Hassan Al-Mustafa

The missiles and drones did not stop. Not during Pezeshkian’s televised address. Not after it. Within 24 hours, the initiative had been exposed for what it was: a presidential declaration that the IRGC had no intention of honoring. The gap between Iran’s presidency and its military establishment had rarely been so publicly laid bare.

The following day, Pezeshkian performed a retreat of his own, claiming his remarks had been “distorted by the enemy seeking to sow discord with neighbors” — an apparent reference to a social media post by US President Donald Trump.

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry was unsparing in its assessment. In a formal statement, Riyadh noted that “the Iranians have not applied this on the ground, before or after the president’s speech. The attacks have continued on baseless grounds.” The peace offensive was stillborn — and it was not Riyadh or the Gulf capitals that killed it. It was the IRGC and its hard-line allies.

The story of the IRGC and the hard-line factions swallowing Iran’s presidency and the Foreign Ministry piece by piece, reducing these two institutions to little more than ceremonial facades stripped of real authority or independence, is a long one. As far as the IRGC is concerned, this is a moment for open-ended confrontation, whatever the cost and wherever the escalation may lead.

This is not a recent development. The roots go back years. Its most vivid telling came from leaked recordings of former Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, who gave a candid and damning account of how Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, assassinated by the US in 2020, repeatedly encroached on Foreign Ministry decisions. Soleimani’s interference, Zarif argued, gutted the ministry from within — sapping its effectiveness while the IRGC steadily tightened its hold through carefully placed appointments and policies it continuously pushed to embed as state doctrine.

For the IRGC, this is a moment for open-ended confrontation, whatever the cost and wherever the escalation may lead

Hassan Al-Mustafa

The pattern repeated itself during President Hassan Rouhani’s second term, when hard-liners — operating through the Islamic Consultative Assembly, the Supreme National Security Council, the Supreme Leader’s office and the IRGC — torpedoed every serious attempt to reach a new nuclear agreement with Washington.

The consequences of this creeping institutional takeover fall on Iran first. A government unable to negotiate, unable to de-escalate and unable to rein in its own security apparatus is a government that cannot function as a coherent diplomatic actor.

The IRGC’s calculations are not only strategically reckless, they are self-defeating, tightening the noose of international isolation around the Iranian people and the regime alike — pulling the country into a tangle of regional complications that will yield none of the gains the IRGC so confidently expects.

For now, the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia foremost among them, have exercised notable restraint. Riyadh has not struck Iranian targets, despite having every legal right to do so in self-defense.

But patience is not infinite. If the IRGC continues its attacks, Saudi Arabia will defend its national security by whatever means it deems necessary. The calculus should be clear in Tehran: it is in Iran’s own interest for the IRGC to step back, abandon its doctrine of perpetual confrontation and allow the presidency and civilian institutions to conduct foreign policy without a gun at their backs.

• Hassan Al-Mustafa is a Saudi writer and researcher specializing in Islamist movements, the evolution of religious discourse, and relations between the Gulf states and Iran.

X: @Halmustafa