There is a war going on within the Iranian presidential palace, where two leading members of the administration are striving to force First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri out of the government.

On one side of the confrontation is presidential Chief of Staff Mahmoud Vaezi and government spokesman Mohammad Bagher Nobakht, who also doubles as head of the Management and Planning Organization. The two men are founding members of the Moderation and Development Party under the leadership of President Hassan Rouhani. On the other side are Jahangiri and his Reformist Executives of Construction Party.

The Moderation and Development Party was established in 1999, while the Executives of Construction Party came into existence in 1996. Both had the support of the late Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former two-time president (1989-97) who passed away in 2017.

Prior to Rouhani's initial election in 2013, Vaezi and Nobakht served as deputies of Rouhani at the Expediency Council’s Center for Strategic Research. Back then, Jahangiri, who was close to Rafsanjani, was a prominent Reformist figure who had prepared himself to run in the 2013 election. But as he saw Rafsanjani nominating himself, he ultimately stepped back.