This weekend, a US delegation led by ostensible “America First”er JD Vance had an opportunity to engage directly with a 71-person Iranian convoy led by former Tehran mayor, current parliament speaker and, more to the point, IRGC brigadier general, Bagher Ghalibaf.

In the event Vance and Ghalibaf ended up in the same room, sitting at the same table, any ensuing discussions would constitute the highest-level direct contact between the US and Iran since the Revolution.

It says a lot, most of it bad, about both countries’ trajectories that Vance and Ghalibaf ended up representing their respective governments at a potentially historic diplomatic conclave.

Forgetting his fitness for the office he currently occupies (never mind the office he’s one “I’m gonna nuke ’em!” Truth from occupying), Vance’s resume is quite impressive. God knows it’s more impressive than mine. And Ghalibaf’s regime CV is impeccable, not that anyone should be proud of such a thing.

But neither side, had you asked them a decade ago, would’ve put Vance or Ghalibaf at a summit like that convened in Islamabad this weekend. That it’s come to this — Vance as the second-highest-ranking government official from history’s most powerful hegemon, and Ghalibaf as acting Iranian head of state — is surreal.

That said, it was a potentially auspicious juxtaposition in the sense that Vance is (or has consistently pretended to be) a non-interventionist and Ghalibaf’s not a cleric.

As Iran’s first vice president (don’t worry about his biography, it’s irrelevant) put it Saturday, “If we negotiate in Islamabad with representatives of ‘America First,’ an agreement beneficial to both sides and the world is probable.”

That was an effort to pander to Vance’s war skepticism. Whatever he says publicly, no one believes Vance is all-in on this war. It’s not an exaggeration to say an invasion would doom his 2028 presidential hopes to the extent he harbors any. He’d rather this end, and Iran knows it.

As for Ghalibaf, I’m sure he misses the countless friends he’s lost to US and Israeli assassinations since January 3, 2020, but he probably isn’t displeased with his personal circumstances. Indeed, if you assume he’s still the rent-seeking, graft-prone mafioso he was during a dozen years running the mayor’s office in Tehran, Ghalibaf’s career prospects are bright indeed.

Ghalibaf’s corrupt, acquisitive side — which is most of him — wants a deal. Because a deal leaves him in charge not just of a localized racket in the capital, but of the whole goddamn enchilada over there. If you think that hasn’t occurred to him, or that his commitment to Revolutionary (proper noun in this context) “resistance” supersedes self-interest, I… well, suffice to say I’m a cynical person.

Ghalibaf has a second personal incentive to make a deal beyond that associated with the opportunity to control the skim in one of the world’s largest oil-producing countries: If he doesn’t make a deal with Trump, Israel’s almost surely going to kill him. Or at least try to. And, as we’ve seen, if Israel’s trying to kill you, your cause of death is very likely to be “IDF airstrike.”

There’s another wrinkle here. Asim Munir, an almost-dictator in Pakistan’s de facto garrison state, is very close to Trump. Munir runs the country’s foreign policy, and anybody who knows anything about Pakistan in 2026 knows it was Munir (and gas prices and maybe Tucker Carlson) who ultimately convinced Trump to back off the bombing earlier this week in favor of the Pakistan sit down.

Just three months ago, Munir presided over a cartoonishly lavish series of meetings between the 36-year-old CEO of Pakistan’s “Crypto Council” (and yes, that’s a real thing) and Zachary Witkoff who, in addition to being the son of Steve Witkoff (Trump’s shadow Secretary of State who’s with Vance in Islamabad this weekend), happens to be CEO of World Liberty Financial, Trump’s crypto venture. Bloomberg described those January meetings as an event “more like a state visit than a ceremony for a non-binding stablecoin agreement.”

In June of last year, when tensions flared between India and Pakistan, Munir and Trump took joint credit for deescalating the situation, a claim Narendra Modi didn’t appreciate. “I stopped the war between Pakistan and India and this man was extremely influential in stopping it from the Pakistan side,” Trump said, while hosting Munir for lunch at The White House.

(If you’re wondering whether a US president had ever hosted Pakistan’s army chief in Washington, on his own, which is to say without a civilian diplomatic delegation, the answer’s a hard “no.”)

Bottom line: Trump loves Munir and praises him every chance he gets including a few days ago while announcing the Iran ceasefire.

Munir also has a decent working relationship with the IRGC and a vested interest in averting a failed state scenario on his border. Ali Larijani, whose assassination last month made Ghalibaf The Last of the Mohicans, so to speak, visited Munir in November.

Throw in the fact that Munir has a mutual defense agreement with Mohammed bin Salman (Shehbaz Sharif signed the deal in September on behalf of Pakistan, but Munir spent the preceding 10 months putting it together and he was there, in person, with Sharif at the signing ceremony), and you’re talking about a man with an enormous personal stake in seeing this conflict end.

None of the above is to say this weekend’s negotiations will prove fruitful, let alone decisive. It’s just to say they could, notwithstanding glaring incompatibilities between Iran’s 10-point plan (11 if you include Ghalibaf’s last-minute demand that Iran’s “overseas” assets be unfrozen) and setting aside Trump’s “Gimmie a cut or I’ll break your legs” Jimmy Bulger act.

Frankly — and without wanting to inadvertently stumble into any noxious tropes — the real sticking point’s Israel, not the state itself anymore, but rather the state’s policy towards its neighbors in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

At this point, I honestly don’t think Iran gives a damn one way or the other whether Israel exists. No, Tehran’s never going to send Israel a decades-overdue “Welcome to the region!” gift basket. But Iran’s 10-point peace plan doesn’t even mention Israel other than to ask they stop attacking Lebanon. Stripped of the particulars, that proposal basically just says, “Leave us the fuck alone, will you?”

Of course, Israel might’ve said the same thing to Iran prior to 2023, but now, in 2026, more or less everyone inclined to aggressively badger the Israeli state is dead. Indeed, the very fact that Iranian officials now regularly (albeit alternatively) refer to Israel as “Israel” is itself a subtle concession.

In the same remarks quoted above, Iran’s Mohammad Reza said he hopes that in Vance, Iran’s not dealing with “a representative of ‘Israel First.'” Because if America’s in Islamabad to press any version of Benjamin Netanyahu’s maximalism, “there will be no deal” and Iran will defend itself “more vigorously than before,” and at a “greater cost to the world.”