Iran Power Struggle Exposes U.S. Leverage Gap and Fuels Kurdish Back Channel Risk
Competing centers of power in Tehran are making it harder for Washington to know who can actually sign a deal, pushing U.S. officials and regional leaders to test informal Kurdish channels. The internal tug‑of‑war inside Iran is turning already fraught nuclear and security talks into a guessing game with real stakes for Iraq, the Gulf, and energy markets.
The biggest risk in negotiating with Iran right now may be that no one outside – or even inside – the country can say with certainty who is empowered to close a deal. That uncertainty is forcing the United States and regional actors to look for work‑arounds, including outreach to Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani, and raising the odds of miscalculation over nuclear, militia and maritime flashpoints.
According to diplomatic reporting, internal divisions and overlapping power centers in Tehran have complicated U.S.-Iran contacts, making it difficult for Washington to determine which Iranian officials actually speak for the system when it comes to final commitments. Rather than a single negotiating counterpart, U.S. envoys are confronting a tangle of institutions – from the presidency and foreign ministry to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the office of the Supreme Leader – that do not always move in lockstep.
As those channels jam, Barzani, the longtime power broker in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, has reportedly become a conduit in a back‑channel effort to keep communication with Tehran alive. For Kurdish authorities, acting as a bridge between Iran and the United States carries tangible risk: Iranian security organs have previously targeted Kurdish groups they accuse of aiding foreign adversaries, while Baghdad watches warily for any move that could pull Iraq deeper into regional confrontation.
The confusion in Tehran is not an academic problem. It affects how quickly, or whether, Iran can agree to curb nuclear activities, contain allied militias along Israel’s and Saudi Arabia’s borders, or dial back harassment of ships in the Gulf. For Gulf states like Qatar and the UAE, whose ports and airspace are critical to Western militaries, the lack of a clear Iranian decision‑maker complicates crisis management if a drone incident, a misread naval encounter, or a strike by an Iran‑aligned group sparks escalation.
Inside Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, the stakes are immediate. Iran’s security services have repeatedly used rocket and drone attacks on what they describe as Israeli or opposition-linked facilities, some near major cities. If Tehran’s institutions are divided over whether to escalate or compromise with Washington, local leaders must navigate a narrower, less predictable space between U.S. security partnerships and their unavoidable geographic proximity to Iran.
For the Biden administration’s successors inheriting this file, the risk is that a familiar playbook no longer fits. Previous U.S.-Iran negotiations hinged on painstaking engagement with a relatively cohesive Iranian diplomatic track; now, decisions on nuclear enrichment, missile development, and regional militias appear more fragmented, with the IRGC’s weight more visible and domestic infighting sharper. That makes every U.S. sanction waiver, every quiet maritime understanding, and every back‑channel message more fragile.
The relationship between power and responsibility in Tehran is increasingly misaligned: those with the capacity to escalate militarily may not have, or may not claim, the authority to de‑escalate diplomatically. That imbalance is what keeps energy traders watching Hormuz, Iraqi leaders watching their skies, and U.S. planners gaming out responses for a crisis none of the actors fully control.
The next signals to watch will be whether Iran can present a unified response to any new U.S. proposal, whether Barzani or other intermediaries publicly surface as mediators, and how quickly regional militias adjust their tempo of attacks. A coherent Iranian reply to Western outreach – or, conversely, a visible clash between Tehran factions over negotiation terms – will tell Washington and its partners how much room is left to manage confrontation without sliding into open crisis.
Sources
- OSINT