India, July 18 -- As Iran and the US have a go at each other and Tehran's neighbours also bear the brunt, the Iranian leadership might also be fighting an internal fight - the perception of being part of a soft coup against the Islamic Republic.

According to a report by CNN, the hardliners in Iran have a theory that is gaining ground among them that Iran's wartime leaders who negotiated and signed the agreement with the US are staging a soft coup while the new supreme leader remains largely invisible.

The report backs the theory up with a few anecdotes from the funeral of late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the initial US-Israeli strikes on February 28.

According to it, when Iran's President Masoud Pez...