17JUN

Pakistan relays Trump's terms to Tehran

3 min read

10:21UTC

US envoys Witkoff and Kushner reportedly reached Iran's parliamentary speaker through Pakistani intermediaries — but Ghalibaf's authority to bind the forces prosecuting the war is an open question.

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Key takeaway

Ghalibaf's IRGC background means any agreement he reaches cannot bind Iran's military without separate authorisation.

Axios identified Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran's parliamentary speaker, as the Iranian figure in contact with the Trump administration⁠¹. US special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner reportedly spoke with Ghalibaf on Sunday evening⁠². CNN reported the US shared a 15-point list of expectations via Pakistan⁠³. Whether Iran agreed to any terms remains unclear. Mediators are now working to arrange a face-to-face meeting between Ghalibaf and the US delegation in Islamabad.

Pakistan has form as an intermediary. Islamabad maintained working relationships with both Washington and Tehran through the 2015 nuclear negotiations and keeps intelligence-level contacts with the IRGC. The proposed Islamabad venue gives Pakistan a visible mediating role it has sought since hostilities began — and a stake in any outcome.

The choice of interlocutor raises a harder question. In Iran's constitutional architecture, The Supreme Leader commands the armed forces; the IRGC reports to his office, not to Parliament. Four days ago, Ghalibaf himself publicly threatened that regional energy and oil infrastructure "will be irreversibly destroyed" if Iranian power plants are struck. Whether he can negotiate a peace framework depends on who is directing him. The Jerusalem Post reported, citing unnamed sources, that the IRGC controls the new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei rather than the reverse, and Mojtaba has not appeared in public since assuming office on 9 March. If the Guards are the effective authority, Ghalibaf's remit extends only as far as they permit.

The gap between Washington's claims and Tehran's denials is narrow but measurable. A senior Iranian Foreign Ministry official told CBS News: "we received points from the U.S. through mediators and they are being reviewed"⁠⁴ — a shift from Araghchi's categorical denial of any US contact four days earlier. Whether this opening widens into an Islamabad meeting depends on a calculation no Pakistani mediator controls: whether Iran's military leadership sees greater value in a diplomatic exit than in the toll revenues and strategic leverage the Hormuz Chokepoint currently provides.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

The US sent Kushner and Witkoff — Trump's personal envoys — to speak with Iran's parliamentary speaker through Pakistani intermediaries. The choice of Ghalibaf matters because he is not Iran's foreign minister or Supreme Leader: he is the speaker of Parliament and a former IRGC commander. That is roughly like negotiating a company's debt restructuring with its head of parliamentary relations rather than its chief financial officer. He can convey messages and signal intent, but he cannot commit Iran's military to compliance with any terms he agrees. Any deal he reaches still requires separate sign-off from Iran's Supreme Leader and the IRGC command.

Deep Analysis

Synthesis

The Abraham Accords model succeeded with Gulf states that had economic modernisation incentives and no existential ideological objection to US engagement. Iran's case differs structurally: regime legitimacy is partly constituted by anti-American posture, and Ghalibaf's IRGC background makes him accountable to the same military command currently under bombardment. Transplanting an Accords-style personal-diplomacy methodology to a party under active attack — whose negotiating representative cannot bind its own military — is applying a tool designed for a structurally different problem.

Root Causes

Kushner's involvement — rather than career State Department diplomats — mirrors the Abraham Accords model: Trump's structural preference for personal-relationship diplomacy that bypasses institutional frameworks and moves with direct presidential authority. This model succeeds when counterparts have economic incentives to engage; it lacks the institutional backstop to manage failure when they do not.

What could happen next?

Opportunity
Pakistan's intermediary role provides multilateral cover and face-saving architecture that publicly acknowledged bilateral US-Iran talks could not offer either government domestically.
Immediate · Suggested
Risk
The Kushner-led personal-diplomacy model has no institutional backstop if negotiations collapse — no State Department infrastructure exists to maintain continuity or manage failure gracefully.
Short term · Assessed
Meaning
Ghalibaf's selection as Iran's interlocutor confirms the IRGC-political complex, not the foreign ministry, is managing Iran's crisis response and will determine any settlement's durability.
Immediate · Assessed
Consequence
If the Islamabad meeting occurs, it normalises direct US-Iran crisis contact at senior level, potentially reactivating diplomatic channels frozen since the 2018 JCPOA withdrawal.
Medium term · Suggested

Source Landscape

This story draws on mixed-leaning sources from United States

United States×3

LeftRight

Primary parallel: Pakistan served as the primary US back-channel for early Taliban contacts during the pre-Doha process (2010–2018) and facilitated initial US-Iran nuclear back-channel communications during the Obama administration's 2012–2013 Oman channel initiation. Its re-emergence as intermediary follows an established geography of necessity — Islamabad has structural incentives to be indispensable to Washington while maintaining Gulf relationships.

Counter-parallel: The Swiss protecting-power channel — the formal US-Iran communication mechanism since 1980 — is better suited for conveying legally binding documents with formal diplomatic standing. Its bypass here suggests crisis-pace negotiations require deniability that the Swiss channel, by design, cannot provide.

Why it’s relevant now

The Swiss channel's bypass matters because formal communications create legal records and signatory obligations; Pakistan-mediated informal contacts preserve deniability for both parties — which may be a structural precondition for Iran to engage at all under current domestic political constraints.

Consensus view: The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (Harvard) has applied Zartman's 'mutually hurting stalemate' framework to Persian Gulf crises: negotiations succeed when both parties find continued conflict more costly than agreement. CENTCOM's 9,000-target, 25-day operational tempo suggests Iran may be approaching that threshold — but the IRGC's continued missile launches indicate it has not yet reached it.

Counter-view: China's Fudan University Centre for American Studies has assessed that Pakistan's intermediary role likely reflects quiet Chinese encouragement: Beijing has strategic and economic interests in Gulf stabilisation and has previously encouraged Islamabad to facilitate US-Iran contacts when direct Chinese mediation would be too visible.

Key tension: Whether Iran's military leadership will permit Ghalibaf — a parliamentary figure with no authority to commit IRGC forces — to reach substantive operational concessions is the structural question that determines whether this channel can produce anything binding.

First Reported In

Update #46 · Trump delays strikes; oil crashes to $99

Axios· 24 Mar 2026

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Causes and effects

This Event

Pakistan relays Trump's terms to Tehran

The channel's structure — Pakistan as go-between, a parliamentary speaker as counterpart — reveals both the possibility of negotiations and their limits. Ghalibaf holds no command authority over the IRGC or Iran's military operations, meaning any framework he discusses cannot bind the forces fighting the war unless the supreme leader's office and the Guards endorse it.

Led to

Iran will negotiate only with JD Vance

Iran responded to US-Ghalibaf contact by demanding Vance replace Witkoff and Kushner as negotiator

Occurred 24 Mar 2026

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Pakistan bids to host US-Iran talks

Pakistan facilitated leadership-level calls after mediators began arranging Islamabad meeting

Occurred 24 Mar 2026

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