But Trump now says they’re dealing with a “top person” in the Islamic Republic.<\/p>\n
The unnamed individual being widely cited, after first reports in Israeli media, is Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf. <\/p>\n
He’s played leading roles in the machinery of Iran including police chief, commander of the air force in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as well as speaker of the parliament.<\/p>\n
He failed four times in presidential runs and described Iranians who took to the streets nationwide in February calling for change as “enemies and terrorists.”<\/p>\n
But in Trump’s world, Ghalibaf is a strongman who could possibly bridge the divides between Iran’s security and political establishments.<\/p>\n
Sources say there have been indirect efforts to try to open a dialogue with Ghalibaf but there’s still no official or public sign they’ve yielded any success. <\/p>\n
For Iran, it’s still highly risky since Israel has been assassinating one top official after another, including Ali Larijani, the hardline security chief who knew the system inside out. He was viewed as a possible intermediary if serious negotiations were ever started.<\/p>\n
Ghalibaf has also been entrenched among its most hardcore elements who now dominate decision-making. Since Larijani’s assassination, he’s now being eyed with interest as someone who might someday do a deal.<\/p>\n
“He’s the last man standing who’s seen as more ideologically flexible,” said one source with knowledge of the various mediation efforts. “But even Trump said if he named him, they’d kill him, and then Israel immediately named him.”<\/p>\n
“This is the most interesting track to watch,” said Ellie Geranmayeh, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.<\/p>\n
But it is not clear if there has been any movement along it. <\/p>\n
“Neither side would meet at that level until the US and Iran are nearing a political breakthrough and a lot of negotiations are needed before they even reach that stage,” Geranmayeh added.<\/p>\n
So far, Ghalibaf has become a troller-in-chief, taking on Trump’s own stream of statements on social media.<\/p>\n
“Our people demand the complete and humiliating punishment of the aggressors,” Ghalibaf lashed out in a post on X on Monday. “No negotiations with America have taken place.”<\/p>\n
With the two sides wide apart, and at war, and with leading officials like Ghalibaf focused on their own survival as well as the system’s, a meeting would be a bold leap.<\/p>\n
For the moment, most diplomacy resides in working the phones. Proposals, multiple points long, are being mooted by mediators racing to find a way out of this deepening quagmire.<\/p>\n
This time, new countries are engaging in this age-old crisis including Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey which have not been on the front lines of the war itself. Their leaders have cultivated close personal ties with Trump and they’ve been actively engaged in an expanded forum of Arab-Islamic nations.<\/p>\n
Oman, the traditional mediator most trusted by Tehran, also says it’s involved in efforts to reduce tension, and reopen the vital Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But Trump now says they’re dealing with a “top person” in the Islamic Republic. The unnamed individual being…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-493521","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}