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An open power struggle is breaking out in Iran between the relatively moderate faction led by President Hassan Rouhani and the more hardline coalition backed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Mr Rouhani directed last year's nuclear talks with the international community and continues to believe in engaging with the West, while Mr Khamenei claims that Iran has not benefited from the agreement that resulted from the negotiations.
In a move that was seen to have favoured the hardliners, Aytatollah Ahmad Jannati, an 89-year-old, ultra-conservative cleric, was elected this week as leader of the Assembly of Experts, the body that will select the next supreme leader.
Jannati has called for members of the Iranian opposition to be executed and encouraged Iraqi citizens to launch suicide attacks on American and British soldiers in Iraq.
This development is seen as part of move to crack down on those elements within the Iranian establishment that dared talk of even the slightest liberalisation in the wake of the nuclear deal.
While some optimistic Western observers heralded the results of the Iranian parliamentary elections earlier this year as a victory for the "moderates", in reality, few reform-minded candidates were allowed to run by the Guardian Council, which struck hundreds of names off the ballots.
The result is a hung parliament in which President Rouhani's allies lack a clear majority. In the meantime, Supreme Leader Khamenei and his allies in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) have made a series of provocative moves towards the West, ranging from ballistic missile tests to an exhibition of cartoons mocking the Holocaust. Foreign Minister Mohamad Jawad Zarif claimed the exhibition was not sanctioned by the regime, but in reality it was sponsored by Islamic groups funded by the government, and was praised by the Supreme Leader.
One factor aiding the hardliners is that the promised "peace dividend" from the nuclear deal - the unfrozen assets and renewed commercial ties with the West - has been very slow to materialise.
International corporations remain reluctant to deal with Iran and hardliners, particularly the IRGC, retain a stranglehold on local businesses.
Nevertheless, it is the Rouhani administration that took credit for the nuclear deal - and he is now being blamed.
After presidential elections in 2013 and this year's parliamentary elections in which large parts of the Iranian public seemed to prefer the more moderate candidates, the tide may be turning towards more populist hardliners, including former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Supreme Leader Khamenei fell out with Mr Ahmadinejad five years ago. There are now indications that he may be about to countenance a return of the former president.
