A newspaper published by the Tehran municipality has released an infographic depicting 13 foreign leaders as targets for revenge over the killing of former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, appearing hours after his son and successor Mojtaba Khamenei declared that vengeance “must certainly be carried out.” The graphic, carried online by Hamshahri but absent from its print edition, superimposes sniper-style crosshairs on the foreheads of US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while showing 11 other figures—including British, French, German and Italian leaders, as well as senior US and Israeli officials—in orange prison uniforms. No Iranian government body has confirmed the list as official policy, and Mojtaba Khamenei’s own statement did not name individuals.

Viewed from within Iran, the publication lays bare a struggle between two camps that has intensified since Ali Khamenei’s death in a US-Israeli strike on 28 February, according to analysts of Iranian politics in the United States and Europe. Hardliners, who dominated the week-long funeral with red flags of vengeance and anti-American slogans, are using the mourning period to frame compromise as strategically dangerous and morally illegitimate, said Saeid Golkar, a professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Pragmatists, by contrast, argue that only diplomacy can secure sanctions relief and stabilise an economy battered by years of sanctions and war. Ali Fathollah-Nejad, director of the Center for Middle East and Global Order in Berlin, described the internal debate as one between those who believe in the “primacy of the battlefield” and those who still see negotiations as the better path.

In Israel, the assassination of Ali Khamenei was widely regarded as a military success, but some Israeli commentators have argued that it may have inadvertently strengthened the regime by rallying public support around a narrative of resistance. US media reports, citing unnamed officials, have detailed what they describe as a “steady drumbeat” of intelligence about Iranian threats to assassinate Trump, and the president himself told reporters he was “on every single one of their lists.” The diplomatic fallout has also drawn in European governments, which Tehran accuses of complicity for allowing US military aircraft to use their airspace during the conflict.

Despite the bellicose messaging, diplomatic channels have not been severed. Iranian negotiators continued contacts with Oman and other mediators even as the latest round of US strikes hit around 140 targets in response to attacks on commercial shipping, and Iran declared the Strait of Hormuz closed until what it called the “end of US interference.” Omani officials had been discussing proposals to restore normal navigation through the waterway only hours before a merchant vessel was attacked, triggering the largest US military response since a ceasefire. The sequence illustrates how quickly military developments can overtake diplomatic efforts, leaving the state of the dossier highly uncertain. No formal next steps have been announced, but indirect talks are expected to continue in Muscat, even as both sides remain locked in a cycle of retaliation.