Iran hasn’t but introduced who shall be representing the nation throughout talks this weekend with the US, led by Vice President JD Vance, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
Many of the regime’s top-ranking officers have been killed by US-Israeli strikes, together with those that performed a key function in earlier negotiations in addition to the nation’s former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Here are three officers who may characterize Tehran within the talks in Pakistan:
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of the Iranian parliament and former Tehran mayor, has emerged as a key interlocutor with the Trump administration all through the conflict, and some Iranian media stories have urged he could possibly be heading this spherical of talks for Iran.
A regime insider with a status for suppressing dissent, Ghalibaf joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a youngster and has devoted his life to the Islamic Republic. He as soon as bragged about beating protestors with “wooden sticks.”
Ghalibaf has the “credentials that matter in Tehran — IRGC pedigree, establishment ties, and a pragmatic instinct for regime preservation,” Ali Vaez, Director of the Iran Project on the International Crisis Group, informed NCS. But he’s allied with the regime, not the US, Vaez mentioned.
“If he rises further, Iran is more likely to become more militarized than moderate.”
Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s overseas affairs minister since 2024, is a profession diplomat who has change into one of the principle worldwide voices for Tehran, touring around the globe to barter on its behalf. He lived within the UK for 3 years within the Nineteen Nineties, the place he obtained a PhD in political thought. His supervisor informed the Times of London that Aragchi had been “at ease in this country” and bought on properly with different college students.
He is understood for being powerful but pragmatic in his in depth engagements with the West, together with in the course of the discussions that led to the Iran nuclear deal in 2015. Despite his overtures with the US, Araghchi is a staunch defender of the regime and publicly backed the violent crackdown in opposition to protesters earlier this yr.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is Tehran’s second-highest rating official and head of authorities, although his workplace’s energy has eroded lately in a nation the place the clerical and army elite maintain the true reins of energy. A former surgeon, Pezeshkian has advocated for modest political and social reforms in Iran however has maintained loyal to the regime.
Earlier this month he penned an open letter to the American folks asking whether or not the conflict really served their pursuits.