US extends ceasefire: does Iran have the upper hand?

Merely pointing to a divide in Iran between pragmatists and hardliners is too simplistic, argues the Aargauer Zeitung:

“What is underway in Iran is a systemic transformation that is far from complete. For more than four decades the Islamic Republic functioned as a hybrid system, led by a cleric – most recently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, for more than 37 years – who acted as a kind of hinge between the various power blocs: the clergy, the military, technocrats and ideologues. … According to most Iran experts, in the power vacuum that has emerged following Khamenei’s death the Revolutionary Guards have effectively taken control of the country; not through a coup but through the ‘creeping logic of war’: those who fight give the orders. Those who give the orders decide.”