After “pausing” strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure, US president Donald Trump declared that his envoys had achieved momentum for ending the war in indirect talks with an unnamed Iranian representative.
“We’re dealing with the man who, I believe, is the most respected and the ‘leader’,” Trump said. “It’s a little tough – we’ve wiped out everybody.”
The US president would be mistaken if he considered this leader to be as amenable as Venezuela’s Delcy Rodriquez, who took over after the US abducted Nicolás Maduro.
Mojtaba Khamenei, wounded survivor of the US blitz and de-facto supreme leader, has not appeared in public and foreign minister Abbas Araghchi is not regarded as a key decision maker.
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Iran’s presumed interlocutor is parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, according to US website Axios, which reports that US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are due to meet Iran’s team in Islamabad at the weekend.
However, hardliner Ghalibaf denied these reports on X: “No negotiations have been held with the US, and fake news is used to manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped.”
Ghalibaf may not be the figure to make concessions needed to end the US-Israel war on Iran.
Born in 1961 in a town near Mashhad in northeastern Iran to a Kurdish father and Persian mother, Ghalibaf earned bachelor’s, master’s and doctor’s degrees in human and political geography from Iranian universities. He has made his three-decade career in the dominant conservative “principlist” faction, which is committed to the values and practices of the 1979 Islamic revolution that overthrew the shah.
He joined the volunteer paramilitary Basij group that year and took part in the campaign to crush Kurdish insurgents in western Iran. During the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, Ghalibaf served with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and became one of its youngest commanders.
In 1999, Ghalibaf became the head of the law enforcement command that reports directly to the supreme leader and is responsible for “internal security” by maintaining public order and enforcing the law. It has been used to counter protests, enforce social control and impose ideological policies.
Ghalibaf has been accused of suppressing dissent during the 2009 “green movement”, which peacefully protested against the election of conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency, and of cracking down hard on subsequent protests.
While Galibaf has stood unsuccessfully for president on a number of occasions, his lack of electability does not detract from the power he wields.
He reportedly ordered police to use live fire against student demonstrations in 2009 and 2013. During this year’s nationwide protests over the collapse of the currency, which transitioned into anti-regime demonstrations, he said, “protesting is the people’s legitimate right” and promised to address economic grievances but also accused protesters of “seeking violence”.
The authorities admit clashes left 3,000 dead but human rights activists put the figure at 33,000 and accuse the government of concealing the true toll.
