If you read CNN, you would be excused for believing that the future of world peace hinges on President Donald Trump’s social media. But it takes two to tango. A recent headline from Apr. 20, 2026, reads, “A deal to end the Iran war seemed close. Then Trump started posting on social media.” This interpretation denies agency to the Islamic Republic, whose internal divisions are the primary impediment to negotiations.
Alayna Treene and Kevin Liptak reported, “As the weekend approached, the US and Iran appeared to be closing in on a deal to end the seven-week war.” But suddenly, “President Donald Trump did exactly what his staffers have repeatedly said they wouldn’t do: He seemed to try negotiating via the press, posting about ongoing talks on social media and speaking to several reporters.” Consequently, the Islamic Republic officials backed out of the negotiations.
The first part of the article, as the title suggests, claims that the two sides would likely have reached an agreement if not for the president’s comments. But the claim (predictably) relies on a single anonymous source who is described only as a “person familiar with the talks.” Worse, their quoted remark does not even support CNN’s conclusion: “The Iranians didn’t appreciate POTUS negotiating through social media and making it appear as if they had signed off on issues they hadn’t yet agreed to, and ones that aren’t popular with their people back home” (emphasis added). There is a wide gap between “didn’t appreciate” and a dealbreaker.
The words of the president of the United States undeniably matter—but only to a point. But to credibly claim his remarks as the only, or even the most important, factor in Iran’s decision-making requires more evidence than the impression of yet another anonymous “person familiar with” the situation, which CNN failed to provide.
CNN’s narrative also requires ignoring the plethora of other factors weighing on the Iranian regime.
What matters much more is the domestic politics, especially the strife between competing factions, inside the Islamic Republic, for which the authors give only a passing attention. They write, “Compounding matters: American officials suspect there is a divide between Iran’s negotiating team, led by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), leading to questions about who can ultimately sign off on a deal.” But are they compounding factors, as the journalists claim, or the core problem?
On Apr. 17, Araghchi tweeted that the Strait of Hormuz was open.
In line with the ceasefire in Lebanon, the passage for all commercial vessels through Strait of Hormuz is declared completely open for the remaining period of ceasefire, on the coordinated route as already announced by Ports and Maritime Organisation of the Islamic Rep. of Iran.
— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) April 17, 2026
Within minutes, Tasnim News, the mouthpiece of the hardliners in the security forces, tweeted a critical thread, “It is obvious that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs itself should necessarily reconsider this type of communication or the Supreme National Security Council should perform its national duty,” which is overriding and disciplining Araghchi. The thread continued, “It is not just the foreign authorities who read [Islamic Republic] authorities’ tweets, even if they are in English!”
The next day, before the president had spoken to the press, Iran began shooting at Indian-flagged vessels. An audio was published with the IRGC navy communicating with a ship, with the officer saying, “The Strait of Hormuz is still closed; we will open it by the order of our leader, Imam [Mojtaba] Khamenei, not by the tweets of some idiot,” referring to Araghchi.
The Islamic Republic of Iran lacks a coherent chain of command. For instance, before the U.S. strike that killed him, Quds Force Commander Ghassem Soleimani was possibly the second most powerful man in Iran after Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, but there were four men above him in the official chain of command, all of whom received orders from him. Former Minister of Foreign Affairs Javad Zarif once remarked that, every time there was a disagreement between “the battlefield and diplomacy,” the military got its way.
“Iran is again at a crossroads between choosing the battlefield and diplomacy. According to the opposition outlet, Iran International, chief negotiator Ghalibaf told his advisers in a recent meeting that “extremists” who oppose an agreement “will destroy Iran.” It is possible that this was a leak authorized by Ghalibaf himself to expose these internal divisions.
Assessing the Iran war and negotiations requires literacy in both American politics and the structure of the Islamic Republic. Unfortunately, most American journalists ignored Iran’s domestic politics throughout the whole of their careers and remain disinterested in learning. Worse, they seem unwilling to talk to actual experts who have studied Iran. (One exception is the Wall Street Journal, whose reporter Benoit Faucon competently reported on these domestic divisions.) It should not surprise us then that most Americans have a skewed understanding of the war.
But the problems go beyond the current conflict. Decades of poor reporting by prominent outlets, such as CNN, have poorly served the American people concerning Iran. Compounding the problem of ignorance is the confidence that they are doing a good job in reporting Iran, evident by the fact that the reporters cited a single (anonymous) source and quoted no credible experts on the record, suggesting that they believe that they have enough mastery of the topic themselves.
For the Hebrew version of this post, please see CAMERA Hebrew.