In an interview with Reza Alijani, a journalist, we talked about the gap between the positions of hardliners such as Mohsen Rezaei and the negotiation-oriented approach of President Pezeshkian’s administration. Alijani believes the Islamic Republic has fallen into the trap of its own policy-making; a trap that consists of two layers: one is the system’s ideological doctrine, and the other is the “expediency thermostat” of the system.