The striking prominence of red flags — a Shiite Muslim symbol for vengeance — among the sea of mourners attending the weeklong funeral of Iran’s late supreme leader was considered a none-too-subtle statement that the country should continue the war with the United States.

That is a demand of the ultra-hard-liners in the Islamic Republic, who want to maintain its 47-year confrontation with Washington. Analysts saw the flags as a telling example of the jockeying for position amid the newly fluid politics in Iran, ever since the war launched by the United States and Israel in February ushered in political uncertainty in Tehran by decapitating the leadership.

The hard-liners “are attempting to use the atmosphere of mourning, national insecurity and opposition to negotiations to narrow the range of politically acceptable debate and to portray compromise as both strategically dangerous and morally illegitimate,” said Saeid Golkar, a professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, who studies Iran’s security forces.

In any case, prospects for a compromise dimmed last week when the United States and Iran resumed military strikes. The fighting was prompted by the unsettled question of the extent of Iranian control over vital shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz

The collapse of the cease-fire jeopardized the memorandum of understanding that the two sides signed on June 17 as a blueprint for future peace talks, including the fate of Iran’s nuclear program.

Fighting resumed Saturday evening and into Sunday, with strikes by both sides. Iran announced that the strait would be completely closed indefinitely, after its navy fired warning shots that halted a merchant vessel navigating without its permission, according to a statement carried by the official IRIB state broadcaster. U.S. Central Command said it was carrying out retaliatory strikes inside Iran.

The renewed warfare further cleaved differences over the wisdom of negotiating that have been evident in Iran since the talks began.

“There is tension between those who favor the primacy of the ‘battlefield’ and those the one of ‘diplomacy,’” said Ali Fathollah-Nejad, director of the Center for Middle East and Global Order, a think tank in Berlin. Those skeptical of diplomacy believe that Iran’s nuclear program, its ballistic missiles and its proxy forces across the Middle East are “indispensable pillars for regime survival, deterrence and power projection — and therefore nonnegotiable,” he said.

Overall, the death of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at the start of the war is believed to have strengthened the hand of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in running the country. The absence of his son and successor in public has helped feed the air of uncertainty.

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