File photo: US Vice President JD Vance and Mohsen Rezaei
US vice president JD Vance has opened a direct channel to one of Iran’s most powerful hard-liners in an attempt to revive peace negotiations according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. The letter was sent at Trump’s direction, according to one person familiar with the matter cited by WSJ, and the president is aware of the initiative. This developments comes even as US president Donald Trump threatens to resume military strikes in the coming weeks. Vance sent a letter to Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in an outreach intended to test whether Washington and Tehran can agree on a framework for negotiations.
He said last week that Washington was not negotiating with Tehran and suggested military action was imminent. Trump has said the war will end only when he decides it should. Rezaei’s emergence as a key interlocutor could also reshape the diplomatic process, potentially sidelining figures such as Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi and parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. A veteran of Iran’s 1980s war with Iraq who led the IRGC for years, Rezaei has become an influential voice as the threat of renewed US attacks grows. Trump, meanwhile, has alternated between pursuing a diplomatic settlement and threatening to bomb Iran into submission, with dismantling its nuclear programme a central national-security priority of his second term.
Whether Vance’s backchannel can create a viable diplomatic path before the president orders another attack remains an open question. During a campaign stop on Tuesday, he accused Iran of dragging out efforts to reach a deal and warned that waiting until after the election would not help it.
Rezaei said last week that Iran would not negotiate with Washington until its core demands were met. Before Trump launched “Operation Epic Fury” in February, Vance argued for more robust diplomacy. The effort comes as Trump weighs a short, intense new attack on Iran after next week’s US midterm elections. Vance is seeking to establish whether diplomacy can avert another round of fighting, though the discussions have yet to produce a detailed peace proposal. Trump later appointed him lead negotiator, and the vice president travelled abroad twice to meet Iranian counterparts in pursuit of an agreement to end the conflict.