The Wall Street Journal reports:

Iran’s combative Parliament speaker, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, is emerging as an unlikely figure in Washington’s search for a deal to halt a widening Middle East war.

Ghalibaf, a former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps air-force commander and Tehran mayor, has denied any talks with the U.S. are under way. He has taunted President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and called the U.S.-Israeli air war with Iran a quagmire. He served in the Revolutionary Guard during Iran’s brutal war with Iraq in the 1980s and is known as a hard-liner’s hard-liner.

At the same time, he is credited with helping to modernize Tehran while he was mayor, becoming famous for riding his motorcycle around town and expanding major highways and the metro system in a traffic-clogged city. In 2008, he traveled to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, portraying himself as a leader with a more business-friendly attitude than other parts of the regime.

Ghalibaf is among a small group of regime figures who fit the profile of someone the U.S. can work with, analysts said. Despite his bombastic rhetoric, Iran watchers said he has in the past demonstrated some pragmatism, which, combined with his regime bona fides, could position him as a viable interlocutor.

“Ghalibaf is Iran’s wannabe strongman,” said Sina Azodi, director of Middle East studies at George Washington University. “A hard-liner with a pragmatic streak.”

“He’s someone with the necessary credentials to deliver a potential deal with the Trump administration,” Azodi added.

Those credentials include frequent posts on X that project a hard-line image with little room for negotiation.

“Our people demand the complete and humiliating punishment of the aggressors,” he posted Monday on X. “No negotiations with America have taken place. Fake news is intended to manipulate financial and oil markets and to escape the quagmire in which America and Israel are trapped.”

He has called on Iran’s neighbors to expel U.S. forces and warned that countries buying U.S. debt could be treated as adversaries. He has openly mocked Washington.

“So what do you think, Tele-General Hegseth?” he wrote March 14 on X. “They are sending poor boys to fix what the generals broke. Go die for Israel.”

Threats aside, some analysts said they think he could be the kind of leader Trump might work with if the regime remains in power. He has held many top political and military positions over the past 30 years, and he maintains close ties to the Revolutionary Guard, the country’s powerful military and economic entity. [Continue reading…]