Hossein Shariatmadari, the chief editor of Iran's leading hardline newspaper, appears to be in quite a quandary. Long Kayhan's primary editorial writer, he kept silent for weeks as Iran's new president, Hassan Rouhani, and his diplomatic team made a series of statements and gestures indicating their willingness to engage in substantive negotiations with the United States and its western allies. Then came the historic telephone exchange last week between Rouhani and Barack Obama, the first direct contact between the presidents of the Islamic republic of Iran and the United States since the 1979 revolution and the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran. On Sunday, Shariatmadari, faced with a choice between continued silence and condemnation, picked the latter.

"The last act of the New York trip, which should be considered most disheartening, and the largest advantage that our nation's respectful president handed [our] opponent, was the phone conversation of his with the president of the US", he said of Rouhani's visit to address the UN General Assembly.

Rather than deal with the content of the conversation, Shariatmadari focused on the announcement by US national security advisor Susan Rice that the Iranian delegation had requested the call. "Based on what analysis and interpretation did his eminence, Mr Rouhani, and the meritorious entourage feel it necessary to trust the Americans and then present the United States' trust-building efforts in such expansive and loud propaganda as one of the fruits of the New York trip? Furthermore, what kind of a 'trust-building step' is this, which neither side is willing to take responsibility for [initiating]?"

"Just take a look at the volume of reviews, analyses, and reports published by the American media, and by American and Zionist officials to see how they reframe the aforementioned telephone conversation in terms of the 'capitulation of Islamic Iran' and its weakness and despair due to the strain of the sanctions", he wrote, without naming any specific media outlets.

Discussing the Kayhan editorial, a senior editor at an Iranian reformist publication told Tehran Bureau, "Shariatmadari is considered an icon in the principlist media realm. For about 20 years, his has been the first and last words among right-wing publications, and his first and last words have always been that under no circumstances should we negotiate with the United States.

"Undoubtedly, Rouhani did not converse with Obama without the consent of [supreme leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei. This has put Shariatmadari in a frightful predicament."

The depth of that predicament was brought into clearer focus when the state-controlled Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, long a source of hardline views essentially identical to Kayhan's, offered a very different perspective on the presidential phone call to its millions of viewers. In its Channel One news programming on Saturday, IRIB presented wall-to-wall coverage of Rouhani and his youthful entourage's return to Iran. Even as it censored out any coverage of the protesters, including Basij militia members, who chanted anti-Rouhani slogans at the airport, the network's reporters roamed the streets of Tehran asking apparently typical citizens for their opinions of the 15-minute conversation between Iran's president and that of the nation which for years it had called "the Great Satan".

Every single one of the people whose interviews were aired welcomed the event.

Massoud, a 25-year-old pharmacist, saw that part of the broadcast at the drugstore where he works. "It was unbelievable. IRIB, since I can remember, only broadcast interviews with people in anti-American demonstrations where they would say that the US was the people's enemy, and should not be negotiated with. The IRIB would repeatedly broadcast this same refrain from people's mouths: 'our martyrs' have given their blood, which would be desecrated under foot if we ever negotiated with America."

"I could not have dreamt that the Iranian news would broadcast the voice of real people who would say, on camera, that our president has conversed with America", he continued. "To see such a thing on IRIB was just as shocking as the actual news of Rouhani's conversation with Obama."

In addition, IRIB featured an analyst who, far from criticising Rouhani's decision to converse with Obama, argued that Iran was now dealing with the United States from a position of strength.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a political analyst told Tehran Bureau, "IRIB demonstrated how completely it acknowledges Khamenei's approval of the recent historic conversation. [Network chief Ezzatollah] Zarghami has gotten the message that Rouhani spoke with Obama by Khamenei's permission, ... interpreted it as the leader's decision, and quickly showed he is amenable to it.

"If IRIB knew that Rouhani had done this on his own, it would have deployed all its reportage and analysis against the people's elected president."

The moderate-right Islamic Republic daily, which is under Khamenei's nominal directorship, ran an op-ed titled "Negotiation's Do's and Don'ts" that similarly offered no criticism of Rouhani for establishing contact with the US president. The author, Soroush Sahebfossul, did remind readers, "American people's views, right or wrong, are interlaced with the occupation of their embassy in Iran. [And] although the world of diplomacy is a world of cost/benefit analysis and decisions based on national interests, it would be simplistic to imagine that just a few negotiation sessions ... will result in normalisation of the two nations' relationship."

Sahebfossul also cautioned against "getting exuberant" over the presidential phone call and emphasized that Iran's economic difficulties are due not so much to the lack of a relationship with the US, "but are more the result of mismanagement, profiteering, structural weakness of the central political core in its supervision of the governments' execution of [economic] policies, placing rent as the governments' [economic] foundation, making it dependent on oil income, and the minuscule share of taxes in the nation's budget."

By contrast, in an unsigned editorial the conservative Raja News website took direct aim at Rouhani for daring to speak to his American counterpart: "Putting aside the glaring error by the president in this attempt, and the lack of respect for the deep theoretical foundations erected by the late Imam [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini] with regards to dealing with the Great Satan, this venture has no benefit for Iran in any economic or rational calculus either. ... This strange and doubtful behaviour on part of the president has occurred in a situation where it will produce no tangible diplomatic outcome for 'revolutionary Iran."

Declaring it especially distasteful that the contact took place during the week in which the "holy defence" is celebrated – commemorating the start of Iran's eight-year war with Iraq – the editorial concluded that there was no clear justification for "frittering away Iran's most treasured national asset, that is, its cutting sword of resistance."

According to a reformist activist who is a member of the banned Participation Front, Raja News reflects the views of the Iranian regime's most hardline faction and its "aggression, outlaw behaviour, and extra-legal conduct."

Observing the website's "vehement" support for the positions espoused by influential ultra-conservative cleric Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, he told Tehran Bureau, "In the last eight years it defended the deranged acts of Ahmadinejad, from denial of the Holocaust to the violent suppression of the Green Movement and belligerence toward the west. This faction's preferred candidate [in June's presidential election], similarly deranged, was Saeed Jalili, a man who said that he didn't welcome any policy reducing tensions with the west, and that his words were those of the leader."

"There are two reasons that Raja News has attacked Rouhani with such fervour", the activist said. "First, Rouhani has broken this faction's taboos, and second, they hold a deep grudge over Jalili's crushing defeat in the presidential race at the hands of Rouhani, who garnered 18 million votes, while Jalili received barely 4 million. It will be a while before their anger toward Rouhani subsides. The issue is not just negotiations with the US. The problem is that the one who has commenced the negotiations is the same one who profoundly humiliated this faction."