The biggest challenge facing American negotiators this week as they head to Islamabad will not be wrangling over the removal of enriched uranium trapped beneath Iran’s destroyed nuclear facilities. It won’t be setting the terms for opening the Strait of Hormuz. And it won’t be trying to end the regime’s support for terrorist proxies in the Middle East.
As important as all of those issues are, the primary question now for the team led by Vice President J.D. Vance is understanding exactly who is calling the shots in Tehran.
Only a week ago, the Trump administration believed that the Iranian regime was run by a committee of five senior officials that included the two men leading their delegation in the Islamabad negotiations: Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.
