{"id":322802,"date":"2026-03-05T07:53:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T07:53:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/322802\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T07:53:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T07:53:18","slug":"iran-reached-out-to-cia-for-terms-to-end-war-with-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/322802\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran reached out to CIA for terms to end war with Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iran\u2019s surviving leaders<\/a> have publicly projected defiance and refused to negotiate with US President Donald Trump<\/a> to halt the American and Israeli assault on their country. But operatives from Iran\u2019s Ministry of Intelligence quietly reached out indirectly to the CIA with an offer to discuss terms for ending the conflict, according to officials briefed on the outreach cited by The New York Times.<\/p>\n

The contact, delivered through another country\u2019s intelligence service, landed as Iran\u2019s leadership structure was thrown into deeper disarray by continued Israeli strikes<\/a>, complicating even the basic question of who can commit Iran to any ceasefire, the report said. US officials described the approach as not serious for now, and said they were skeptical that either Washington or Tehran is genuinely ready for an immediate offramp.<\/a><\/p>\n

The White House and Iranian officials did not respond to requests for comment, according to the report. The CIA declined to comment.<\/p>\n

Israeli officials, the report said, have urged Washington to disregard the overture as Israel pursues a sustained campaign aimed at inflicting maximum damage on Iran\u2019s military capabilities and, potentially, bringing about the collapse of Iran\u2019s government. In Washington, the approach is being treated with caution, in part because the conflict\u2019s trajectory has become increasingly intertwined with leadership decapitation, succession uncertainty, and competing endgame theories.<\/p>\n

Trump, who had suggested in recent days that he was open to discussions, adopted a harder line publicly after the outreach was reported. In a social media post, he wrote that it was \u201ctoo late\u201d for talks, and later repeated the message in remarks to reporters.<\/p>\n

\"USUS President Donald Trump returns to the White House, after Israel and the U.S. launched strikes on Iran, in Washington, DC, US, March 1, 2026. (credit: REUTERS\/Nathan Howard)<\/p>\n

In the same exchange, Trump underscored how quickly the pool of potential Iranian interlocutors is shrinking. \u201cMost of the people we had in mind are dead,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cPretty soon we are not going to know anybody,\u201d according to the account cited by The New York Times.<\/p>\n

That dynamic goes to the heart of the problem now confronting Washington: even if Iran\u2019s security establishment decided it wanted a pause, it is unclear whether anyone can enforce it across Iran\u2019s fractured power centers, or whether a deal could survive the pace of strikes and counterstrikes. The more the Iranian system is degraded, analysts say, the more a negotiation could resemble a scramble to identify a signatory rather than a classic bargaining process between intact governments.<\/p>\n

US officials, according to the report, are expected to insist that any agreement to stop the bombing includes a pledge by Tehran to abandon or drastically curtail its ballistic missile and nuclear programs and end or sharply reduce support for proxy groups such as Hezbollah. Trump has indicated he could allow Iran\u2019s surviving leaders to retain significant economic and political power in return, a formula that would prioritize compliance on strategic programs over sweeping internal political reform.<\/p>\n

\"BirdsBirds fly as smoke rises following an explosion, after Israel and the US launched strikes on Iran, amid the US-Israel conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, March 2, 2026. (credit: MAJID ASGARIPOUR\/WANA (WEST ASIA NEWS AGENCY) VIA REUTERS)<\/p>\n

Trump has repeatedly pointed to Venezuela as a preferred model, describing it as a scenario in which pressure and targeted action produce a controllable political outcome rather than prolonged instability. \u201cWhat we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect scenario,\u201d he said in an interview cited by The New York Times. \u201cLeaders can be picked.\u201d<\/p>\n

Critics of that approach argue that Iran is structurally different, with parallel chains of command, ideological institutions, and a security apparatus that can survive decapitation by redistributing authority downward. They also warn that a \u201cpicked\u201d leadership outcome could amount to a rebranding of the same coercive networks, especially if the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps emerges as the dominant force in a weakened state.<\/p>\n

Do Israel and US see eye to eye on regime change?<\/p>\n

The report also described growing signs of tension over war aims between Washington and Jerusalem, with analysts arguing that Israel does not want the United States to engineer a \u201cVenezuela-like solution\u201d that leaves core power structures intact under new faces. Steven A. Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations said Trump\u2019s shifting statements could reflect that divergence, according to the account.<\/p>\n

Beyond the leadership question sits a second strategic risk: state fracture. Analysts cited by The New York Times warned that Iran could lose control over remote regions dominated by ethnic minorities, or collapse into chaos and violence resembling the civil wars in Syria and Libya, outcomes that would be harder to contain and could create new security vacuums.<\/p>\n

Trump initially leaned into the idea of popular revolt, urging Iranians in a video message to rise up and saying \u201cthe hour of your freedom is at hand,\u201d according to the report. He later struck a more passive note, saying the decision would be \u201cup to them,\u201d language reflecting the uncertainty over whether Washington could shape, or even tolerate, the outcome of a bottom-up revolution.<\/p>\n

Some experts argue that even a successful uprising would not reliably produce a US-friendly successor government. \u201cThere\u2019s a low likelihood that a successor state would be a liberal democracy friendly to the United States,\u201d said Rosemary Kelanic of Defense Priorities, in remarks cited by The New York Times, noting the legacy of a war with the United States would shape any new order.<\/p>\n

Trump himself acknowledged the risk of replacement without improvement. \u201cThe worst case would be we do this, and then somebody takes over who\u2019s as bad as the previous person,\u201d he said, according to the report.<\/p>\n

Questions about alternative figures have also resurfaced, including Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran\u2019s former shah. Trump appeared unenthusiastic, describing him as someone who \u201clooks like a very nice person,\u201d while indicating a preference for \u201csomebody that\u2019s there that\u2019s currently popular, if there\u2019s such a person,\u201d according to the report.<\/p>\n

The broader context is a long, frustrated American debate about whether Tehran contains a workable \u201cmoderate\u201d interlocutor within its existing political structure. Trump and some of his advisers have portrayed Iran\u2019s current leadership as irredeemably ideological, with Trump branding them \u201cradical lunatics\u201d in recent remarks cited by The New York Times.<\/p>\n

At the same time, past US administrations have tried negotiating through Iranian officials framed as more pragmatic, including the 2015 nuclear deal reached under President Barack Obama, which Trump later abandoned. Skeptics have long argued that Iran\u2019s clerical system constrains any individual leader\u2019s flexibility, a point often summarized by former US defense secretary Robert Gates\u2019s quip about searching for the \u201celusive Iranian moderate.\u201d<\/p>\n

For now, the backchannel approach appears to have changed little in the immediate calculus in Washington. But it has sharpened the central dilemma: the harder the campaign hits Iran\u2019s leadership, the more difficult it becomes to identify a counterpart capable of delivering the kind of sweeping strategic concessions the United States says it wants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iran\u2019s surviving leaders have publicly projected defiance and refused to negotiate with US President Donald Trump to halt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[78204,54,86,85,87,46,21452,15005,43,157282,157283,18413,157840],"class_list":["post-322802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-cia","tag-donald-trump","tag-hezbollah","tag-il","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-israel-iran","tag-israel-iran-war","tag-news","tag-operation-epic-fury","tag-operation-roaring-lion","tag-venezuela","tag-war-with-iran-scenario"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}