Trump says Iran's government is “in a state of collapse,” but analysts see an evolution, not a rupture.

President Trump has said that “fighting confusion” within the Iranian regime is partly why it has been so difficult to reach an agreement to end the war between the US and Israel on February 28.

Analysts told CBS News, that although the power structure is changing, there is little evidence of a rift disrupting Iran's leadership, and Mr.

Trump says “nobody knows who's in charge”

A month after former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the first US-Israeli attack on Iran, war broke out. a war that has shocked the world economy For more than two months, President Trump has declared that regime change in Iran is “complete.”

“The next regime is very dead,” he said a few days after the strikes began on February 28, adding that US negotiators were talking to a “different group” of “very rational” people.

He has changed tack in recent weeks, saying diplomatic progress on a deal to end at least part of the war in Iran's fifteen-year-old theocracy is “disintegrating” and “in a state of collapse.”

“There is a lot of conflict and confusion among their leadership,” said Mr. Trump in a tweet in late April. “Nobody knows who's in charge, including them.”

The political, military and religious authorities have long resided in one person in Iran, the supreme leader. Iran named Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei as the successor shortly after his father and predecessor, Ali Khamenei, was killed in the first strike.

American officials say the younger Khamenei was seriously injured, possibly incapacitated, in the strike that killed his father. There has been no independent confirmation of his status, and he has not been directly seen or heard from since being declared the country's top executive.

At least initially, that lack of visibility helped fuel the power vacuum ideas. But there is another institution in Iran that has long been very powerful, and one that could quickly encroach on any place in Tehran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The Iranian revolution “from the power of God … to the power of hard”

The IRGC is a long-standing military, political and economic force that answers directly – and only – to the supreme leader. It is responsible for Iran's foreign military and military efforts, including managing relations with a network of so-called power proxies throughout the Middle East, and to help strengthen domestic security, end tensions.

A recent article by Reuters news agency, citing Iranian officials and analysts, suggested that the supreme leader's role was “mainly to legitimize the decisions made by his generals rather than issuing directives himself,” and that the power was concentrated in the wartime leadership that included the National Security Council, the supreme leader's office and the now important military decision-making body, the IRGC.

Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at London's Chatham House think tank, agrees that “we are entering a leadership transition in Iran,” which she told CBS News could bring about “a change in decision-making in general.”

The transition has been underway for several decades, he said, as the ruling clerics have seen their 47-year grip on power loosen while the IRGC has increased its own, with significant business acquisitions and gaining influence as former members have turned politicians.

Aaron David Miller, a Mideast expert and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who once worked as a US government negotiator, said in a podcast in April that Iran “has moved away from the power of God …

There have also been rumors that the IRGC may attempt a coup. But on the ground, that seems unlikely.

The IRGC has always derived some authority from its military power, but it comes mainly from the unit's deep and direct connection to the supreme leader's institution.

Without that link to lend religious and ideological legitimacy, the force can be seen by many Iranians as just another branch of the military, rather than as anointed defenders of the Islamic Republic's political system, which much of the country still supports.

Many Iranian analysts believe that as long as the supreme leader lives that office will remain the highest authority in the nation.

A kingdom divided by “strategies”

Iran's President Massoud Pezeshkian, whose office is very similar to that of the vice president in the US – decidedly less than the supreme leader – is considered a moderate in the government. Many suspect that he and other political officials are keen to return to negotiations, fearing the consequences of a return to full-scale war with the US.

The IRGC, on the other hand, tried to show weakness.

“If you attack the infrastructure of the Islamic Republic of Iran, our response will no longer be an eye for an eye, but a head for an eye,” IRGC Major General Mohsen Reza'i, a military adviser to Khamenei, said in March.

There have been rumors of a rift between IRGC commander Brigadier General Ahmed Vahidi and Mohammed-Bagher Ghalibaf, the parliament speaker who led Iran's negotiating team during the only round of direct talks with US officials since the war began. Those talks are from early April in Islamabad there was no agreement to transform the peace agreement into a comprehensive peace agreement.

On Monday, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who is also part of Iran's negotiating team, said in the X post that, “there is no military solution to the political problem,” which could be interpreted as a dig at the US, and the IRGC.

Political figures such as Pezeshkian and Araghchi have a limited influence on Iran's power structure, however, and analysts say that these differences of opinion – perhaps even more public now during the war – pose little threat to the government.

Vakil told CBS News that the state is, without a doubt, divided “tactically, especially with regard to negotiations.”

There have been thinly veiled disagreements between moderate figures and ultraconservatives, for example making concessions to the US.

The IRGC-affiliated Tasnim news agency published (and later deleted) an editorial in late April mocking the ultraconservatives, comparing their expectations for the talks to a “magic beanstalk.”

Ultraconservative cleric and Iranian parliament member Mahmoud Navabian, on the other hand, criticized even holding talks with the US as “pure damage” to the country, saying in X, “Iranian oil is selling at twice its pre-war price,” and saying that those who favor an end to talks are “cowards.”

But ultraconservatives are a small minority. Iran's parliament recently voted overwhelmingly in support of a statement supporting the negotiating team.

The Trump administration is “less inconsistent” than the Iranian regime?

While there are competing views, Vakil told CBS News that the political differences in Tehran look similar to what he sees in Washington.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, says, “is focused on delivering a successful military campaign, and [Treasury Secretary] Scott Bessent focuses on the economic portfolio of US interests”

“So for me, all this is normal,” said Vakil, but in Iran, “all different groups and people are together in the preservation of the state and its security and stability.”

The emergence of power in Tehran does not necessarily indicate weakness in the Iranian regime, but experts told CBS News that the White House could have a strong interest in whether it does.

“While it is possible that the Trump administration initially hoped that there would be a 'Venezuela option,' with a figure like Delcy Rodriguez entering the leadership, there is no such option” in Iran, Mona Yacoubian, Director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told CBS News.

“Instead, we have seen that the initial beheading strikes have led to an IRGC-dominated government in Iran that has taken a hardline stance,” he said. “The supreme leader no longer has the final say in decision-making … Instead, decisions about Iran's negotiating position with the United States appear to be made by a group of IRGC leaders.”

Vakil said he believed that Mr. Trump may have “exaggerated or misrepresented the rift” in Iran as a “pretext” for a negotiation process that was “not easier or quicker to launch on the part of Washington than Trump may have wanted.”

“It's easy to blame [Iran],” he said.

Vakil said he believes Iran's rulers “have very clear red lines, and it's very clear about what they're trying to achieve, which is the survival of the regime – a permanent deal and guaranteed sanctions relief – and the US has been a little more consistent and vague.”