Who you gonna believe: Donald Trump or Bagher Ghalibaf?
If it’s between those two, and only those two, I got nothin’ for you I’m afraid.
One’s a pathological liar who spent the better part of the last decade feeding Americans false narratives. And who wouldn’t hesitate to embellish tentative diplomatic back-channeling in the service of engineering a stock rally and lower oil prices.
The other’s a notorious windbag whose resume includes a quarter century of service in the IRGC and who counted Qassem Soleimani, who Trump assassinated, as a close personal friend.
Ghalibaf ran for president in Iran three times, four if you count the 2017 election, when he withdrew at the last minute in a failed attempt to push Ebrahim Raisi over the top. The closest he ever came to winning was 2013, when he secured nearly 17% of the vote, placing a distant second to Hassan Rouhani. Among the 17% of voters who cast their ballot for Ghalibaf that year: Soleimani.
Last week, Ghalibaf finally became president, or shadow president, when Iran’s de facto head of state — who happened to be Ghalibaf’s predecessor as speaker of parliament — was incinerated in an Israeli airstrike.
Officially, Masoud Pezeshkian’s president, but he’s a figurehead. He has no power. With Mojtaba Khamenei unresponsive and quite likely incapacitated, Trump’s now negotiating with Ghalibaf. Or not.
“No negotiations have been held with the US,” Ghalibaf said Monday. Trump, he went on, is using “fake news to manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped.”
I know what you’re thinking: “No, no Bagher. Trump wouldn’t do that.” I’m kidding. That’s absolutely something Trump would do, and indeed it’s something Trump has done before during fraught trade negotiations with China.
In the same set of public remarks, Ghalibaf said the Iranian people will accept nothing less than “the complete and humiliating punishment” of the US and Israel for their “aggression” against Iran. “All officials stand firmly behind their Leader,” he went on.
The capitalization of the word “Leader” suggests Ghalibaf was referring not to himself, but to Mojtaba who, to reiterate, might be a corpse. Iran hasn’t offered anything like conclusive proof of life, and if Israel’s to be believed, the IRGC can’t raise him.
For its part, Axios says Ghalibaf’s lying and that in fact, he’s engaged with Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff on ending American, but not necessarily Israeli, involvement in the war. Apparently, Kushner may meet with Ghalibaf in Pakistan at some point this week.
If a picture’s worth a thousand words, the image below could fill a library. Last summer, Ghalibaf gifted Nicolas Maduro a miniature statue of Soleimani “in appreciation” of Maduro’s “courage in the fight against terrorism.”
The likeness isn’t perfect. I doubt Soleimani would be impressed, although I’m sure he appreciates the gesture. Wherever he is.
I hate to be the guy who says “I told you so” twice in a day, but I’d be doing myself a disservice not to point out that on at least half a dozen occasions since mid-January, I suggested Ghalibaf may end up running Iran by default if and when everyone else who counts gets assassinated. That appears to be where we are now.
In Houston on Monday, Trump’s energy secretary said the administration really isn’t sure who’s in charge in Tehran. “That’s one of the things we’ll learn in these dialogues,” Chris Wright said. “Who’s in power and how’s it working?”
I wish I could find the words to communicate how funny that picture is to someone who’s both a geopolitics junkie and a self-taught Soleimani “expert.” If I were still drinking, I’d be incapacitated by an uncontrollable case of the chuckles.
Got me chuckling
This is just silly human shit
Very deadly kind.
The world is Trump‘s Colosseum.
A gem indeed, a photo that oozes comedy and tragedy on so many levels. I might print it and frame it.
My crazy conspiracy theory, and mind you, I only half believe this myself, is that the US/CIA is setting up Ghalibaf as the puppet dictator of the banana republic (since Motjaba is in a coma or something). This is all keyfabe.
Well, he wouldn’t be a “puppet” in the sense that you mean it. He’s not a plant. He’s been around since the very beginning. He joined the IRGC pretty at inception. He might end up being a puppet in the Delcy sense, but like Delcy, his regime credentials aren’t in question. It’s just a matter of what fate he wants to choose for himself. Initially, he’s going to keep parroting the usual anti-US bombast. But so did Delcy for the first two or three weeks. Ghalibaf can’t go “full Delcy,” so to speak, if he wants to retain any credibility at all among Iran’s hardliners of which he’s one himself. But if wants to stay alive, he has to negotiate. Because the only person between him and an Israeli airstrike is going to be Trump.
So now, Trump and leaders of Iran are best buddies, almost to the point of going on vacation together, they are so close, BUT the administration really isn’t sure who is in power over there. Sounds about right for a Monday in the Twilight Zone.
Surreal is just real now. The Iranians might be doing a geopolitical version of Weekend at Bernie’s right now with their leader. The picture above made me laugh. It is like these guys are modeling a bobblehead for a sporting event or something. Thanks, H. The posts are extremely valuable amid however one characterizes what is happening.
“Apparently, Kushner may meet with Ghalibaf in Pakistan at some point this week.”
I’m so relieved to hear that we have our best negotiator (besides the president himself) on the case.
Maybe this is a good thing since DJT appears to trust Jarod to some extent.
Yeah, such a relief.
However, I will never cease to be amazed how credulous most of the media and markets are. Trump is able to engineer a market rebound simply by claiming there are “good talks” (the best probably, the likes of which no one has ever seen before) and everybody take his word for it. So far specifics are scarce, it seems like they are talking to “a top guy” (which one?) and agreed about, “like 15 points” (direct quote from the president of the USA), 3 of which are no more nukes. If even that. All of this coming from a guy who told more than 30.000 lies during his first term.
The Enemy of my Enemy!!!