Iranians who oppose the regime are “shocked” by the emerging details of an agreement between the US and Iran, an Iranian source told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
The source, who is in touch with Iranians inside Iran and is knowledgeable about the situation on the ground nationwide, discussed how the emerging agreement is being received in Iran.
The source said that friends say “everything was going on organically to the advantage of the Iranian people and the world since the first war in June 2025 started against the Islamic Republic.”
The source discussed the 12-day war and how that conflict, which began with Israeli strikes on Iran, was successful.
However, the source said that dissidents in Iran have been surprised by the outcome of the Trump administration’s involvement. “He came to harvest what Israelis had planted while the tree was still a sapling, and he ruined the seeding.”
The source said that one surprising comment among opponents of the regime is talk about how hardliners could stage a military coup inside Iran. This is because there is opposition to an emerging deal within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
“There’s numbers [sic] of hardliners in the regime body yet,” the source said, then claimed that “reformists in the IRGC” have been doing “a purge in recent months. They isolated the hardliners.”
Worry that Iran's regime 'fooled' US
The concern is that within Iran, the regime perceives an emerging deal, apparently mediated by Pakistan and Qatar, as a win for Tehran.
“On Iranian state TV, they described it as the victory of the axis of resistance against the US,” the source notes. “We are all shocked. I was talking with a friend in Iran a few hours ago. They can’t believe they made the deal.”
The concern among those who oppose the regime in Iran is that the US has been convinced to make this deal.
The source is critical of the Trump administration’s team and says they have been fooled by the regime. “We were thinking that hardliners in Iran won’t allow the moderates and reformists to do a deal with the US.”
Iranian hardliners could 'sabotage deal, weaken regime'
This has led some to believe that it may be preferable for the “hardliners in Iran to gain more temporary power, so they can stop this agreement from being finalized.” In a sense, the hardliners could sabotage the deal, thereby weakening the regime in the long run.
“The moderates within the IRGC, and those working with them, understand the language of Western diplomacy. They know how to mislead Western governments, how to switch to the role of the ‘victim’, and how to shape international public opinion so that it looks as if the Islamic Republic has been treated unfairly,” the source added.
There is now a concern that the regime and its proxies, such as the Houthis and Hezbollah, have won. There is a sense that the Iranian people deserved better than what has happened to them.
They suffered a massacre in protests in January, and then the February war did not bring the toppling of the regime. Instead, the regime may feel empowered.