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.
