A consensus is emerging within Iran’s fractious political scene that the country must relaunch negotiations over its nuclear program with the United States, even as mistrust remains over whether such talks could simply be the prelude to another Israeli attack, according to analysts and political observers inside and outside Iran. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi have engaged in a media blitz over the past several weeks seeking to distinguish between the U.S. and Israel, stressing that a negotiated settlement could be reached with Washington despite Israeli hostility.

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In an interview with conservative media personality Tucker Carlson published last week, for instance, Pezeshkian accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of planting the idea in American minds that Iran was after a nuclear weapon but emphasized that his country could “very much easily resolve our differences and conflicts with the United States through dialogue and talks.” And in an opinion piece in the Financial Times, Araghchi said Iran and the United States “were on the cusp of a historic breakthrough” before the Israeli strikes began.

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Some observers say the momentum toward resuming negotiations reflects a power struggle in Tehran that has intensified after the Israeli and American attacks last month, with those advocating a more conciliatory approach gaining influence at the expense of those favoring confrontation.

Still, there are dissenters. Hadi Masoumi Zare, a regional expert who has appeared in the past on an outlet affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, acknowledged the ongoing struggle and criticized efforts of policymakers who he said are exploiting the blows dealt by Israel to push for talks with the U.S.

In a podcast episode released last week, Masoumi Zare said, “Today, in the absence of many of these commanders, and with the feeling that this ideological and revolutionary layer has been weakened and eroded by Israel, they are trying to sell themselves and their mental model as the savior to the Iranian people.” He said this campaign was part of a broader effort to dominate Iran’s power centers.

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For Iran’s top officials, a sustained attack like the one Israel carried out on its territory last month, paired with the U.S. bombing of three nuclear facilities, was once an unthinkable proposition.

But those dramatic attacks have not produced a significant change in Iran’s public positions. Iran has signaled neither a greater interest in pursuing a nuclear weapon nor any willingness to give up its nuclear program entirely. It still insists on the right to produce nuclear fuel within its borders while repeating that it is not considering the development of a nuclear weapon. Perhaps most striking, the U.S. strikes have not prompted Iran to turn away from Washington.

“I would expect, after all that happened and the war and so on, to hear sort of a unanimous position rejecting any engagement with the United States. … But, actually, it seems that the opposite is happening,” said Hamidreza Azizi, a visiting fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. He added, “The key here is the vulnerabilities being on full display, and that resulting in some sort of pragmatic approach.”

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Iran is in a difficult position. The attacks revealed that its missile and air defense systems — much vaunted in the past by military and political leaders — were no match for assaults by two advanced militaries.

The Israeli campaign, in particular, also revealed Israeli intelligence’s deep penetration of Iran’s security forces, which is likely to give Iran pause as it considers whether and how to rebuild its military and nuclear capabilities. Israel managed to smuggle weapons into the country in advance and knew the location of a bunker used by top Iranian air force officials, striking it and killing those commanders.

“This is the first war on Iranian territory since the Iran-Iraq War [of the 1980s], and the regime totally botched it,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington.

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Adding to Iran’s problems is the state of its economy, weighed down by persistently high inflation and unemployment.

Those pressures could worsen if European countries decide in the coming weeks to trigger the reimposition of U.N. sanctions by declaring that Iran is not complying with its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said last week that Europe could impose “dramatic sanctions” unless Iran gets “serious about the international desire to see them step back from their nuclear ambitions.”

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Trump administration officials believe Iran is open to a diplomatic agreement on its nuclear program even after the U.S. and Israeli strikes upended existing talks, said a U.S. official familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive subject. That view has been reinforced by diplomatic discussions in recent days. On Monday, Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff said the talks would happen “very quickly, in the next week or so.”

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Iran, however, has made clear to several neighboring countries serving as intermediaries that there is “basically no chance of negotiation” under conditions of threat, said Mostafa Najafi, a Tehran-based analyst who is close to Iran’s security policy circles. Iran also needs a guarantee of some kind that Israel won’t attack again in the midst of a new round of talks, he said.

“Before Iran enters a new diplomatic path with the Americans, it wants to have this guarantee, whether that’s through mediators or a legal framework, whatever it is,” he said.

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Aliasghar Shafieian, a former campaign adviser to Pezeshkian who is the director of a reformist news site in Tehran, said that during his year in office, Pezeshkian had built consensus within Iran’s power centers to pursue diplomacy and that the current moment represented a “a golden opportunity” for talks with the U.S. “Iran has the will to negotiate,” he said.

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Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the highest-ranking official in Iran’s theocratic system, has yet to weigh in on the prospect of new negotiations with the United States, which he has in the past viewed with deep skepticism.

In the aftermath of the attacks, Iran’s parliament voted to suspend cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, and Pezeshkian put the law into effect. But the law allows for continued cooperation under two conditions: that Iran’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity are respected and that the country’s right to enrich uranium is ensured. Iran’s Supreme National Security Council was given the responsibility of determining whether those conditions had been fulfilled.

Analysts, including Shafieian, said the law did not represent a serious stumbling block to future compromise. Najafi said the parliamentary vote was the “minimum response to the bombing of its nuclear facilities” that Iran could have taken and far less drastic than other possible responses, such as pulling out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The enactment of the law sent two messages, Najafi said: that Iran was ready for diplomacy and did not want to exacerbate tensions but also that it was ready to take further steps if the U.S. intensifies the pressure.

“Iran has left the path open for diplomacy,” he said.