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,” Axios reports.

“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.”

”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 negotiate with a country where Washington isn’t sure who exactly is in charge.”