AXIOS (Barak Ravid) - Scoop: Inside Trump's secret backchannel to Iran's Revolutionary Guard
In mid-May, U.S. negotiators trying to reach a deal with Iran to end the war ran into a problem: They couldn't tell if the people across the table actually spoke for the country's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). - So Trump administration officials did something unconventional — they went around Iran's negotiators and reached out directly to IRGC leadership. The person they tapped for the backchannel was Nechirvan Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan region in Iraq, who had something very few others do: the trust of both U.S. and IRGC leaders. Why it matters: The episode, which was detailed by three sources with direct knowledge and has not been previously reported, shows how tricky it's been for the U.S. to…
AI:The Trump administration bypassed traditional Iranian negotiators to establish a secret backchannel directly with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) leadership in an effort to resolve ongoing hostilities. Following the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and subsequent instability that shifted actual power to the IRGC, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard utilized Nechirvan Barzani, president of the Kurdistan region, as a trusted intermediary due to his personal ties within the Iranian regime. While Barzani successfully facilitated communication with IRGC General Ahmad Vahidi to verify if Tehran's political officials were actually authorized to negotiate, proposed secret meetings in Erbil failed to materialize…Open
