For weeks, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has insisted that there are no fissures in the Iranian regime. Any allegations of such tensions are simply part of a U.S. propaganda war against Tehran, he declared. But then last Monday, at what was billed as a "unity lunch," Khamenei asked 28 of the country's most powerful leaders -- mostly mullahs -- to put aside their differences and coalesce around a single cause: preserving the system.

The "realists." A considerable number of current and former high- ranking officials -- including former heads of the intelligence agencies, former president Mohammad Khatami and Iran's lead nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani -- believe that the Islamic republic must take a more conciliatory attitude toward the West and try to reach an accord. Some in this group have even advocated a halt to the uranium enrichment program. According to Akbar Ganji, Iran's leading dissident, even [Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani] has recently advocated this view. This group should not be labeled "moderates" or "reformers," but they see Ahmadinejad's policies as a threat to both Iran's and their own personal interests.

More crucially, the administration must be uncompromising in its support for Iranian democrats. The regime is trying to sell the Iranian people the idea that the United States, like Europe in the past and China and Russia today, is willing to sacrifice their democratic aspirations. Washington must combine direct negotiations -- admittedly long overdue -- with an unambiguous message to the people of Iran that the United States is not ready to legitimize a system in which only the select few hold power.