The Pink Unicorn in Tehran

There’s a big hitch in the negotiations with Iran. Who exactly is calling the shots?

As JD Vance and the negotiating team found out during the last talks in Islamabad, it certainly wasn’t the Qalibaf, the parliament speaker, or his sidekick Araghchi, the foreign minister.

Three times in 2015, John Kerry thought he had a deal with his best buddy, Javad Zarif. And three times, Javad Zarif smiled for the cameras, shook his hand, and slinked off to Tehran, where the Supreme Leader kept demanding more.

Those stupid Americans gave you what? I can hear the ayatollah saying in astonishment. In that case, you’ve got to ask for this… and that… and more.

And so it was that we got the Iran nuclear deal in 2015, with Kerry making concession after concession that allowed Iran to keep enriching uranium and to develop high-speed centrifuges, removed limits on their ballistic missiles, and expunged the Revolutionary Guards and even the Quds Force from U.S. sanctions lists.

As Donald Trump has said repeatedly and accurately, it was a deal that guaranteed Iran would get nuclear weapons.

Much is being made about “hard-liners” versus “moderates” in Tehran — again. That ostensibly smart “analysts” and pundits can still spout such nonsense defies logic and experience.

As former secretary of defense Robert Gates said in a speech to the National Defense University nearly twenty years ago, the United States has been engaged in the search for “the elusive Iranian moderate” since the beginning of the Islamic regime, and has never found such a creature, which is rarer than a pink unicorn.

Iranian president Mahmoud Pezeshkian put it well in a tweet earlier in the week. “In Iran there are no ‘hardliners’ or ‘moderates.’ We are all Iranians and revolutionaries.”

But there are two approaches to negotiations with the United States.

Revolutionary Guards commander Major Geneal Ahmad Vahidi, the former Quds Force chief who orchestrated the AMIA bombing in 1994 and Khobar Towers in 1996, believes that negotiations with the United States over anything but the terms of American surrender in the Gulf would show the IRGC to be weak.

The Rev. Guards commanders continue to beat their chests, proclaiming Iran’s inherent “right” to enrich uranium and build ballistic missiles, and vow to drive the Americans from the Persian Gulf.

Why? Because they know that if they show any sign of weakness to the Iranian people they are toast.

Their entire repressive regime is built on the myth of the IRGC’s invincibility. So, no negotiations. Continued provocations in the Strait of Hormuz. Pinprick violations of the ceasefire, daring America to respond.

President Pezeshkian and the technocrats who surround him believe that without negotiations, the regime will perish. And they base that conclusion on the geology of the ageing Iranian oil fields that must constantly pump oil into the storage tanks on Kharg Island or shut down, perhaps never to pump oil again.

President Trump understands that geology well. And he is twisting it like a knife into the hearts of the Iranian technocrats.

Both sides want the regime to survive. On that, they are 100% united. And neither of them is or can be our friend, or the friend of the Iranian people.

The IRGC, of course, has all the guns. And the missiles. To prove their point, in recent days they have been parading those enormous 22-wheel missile launchers through the streets of Tehran and other cities, as if daring the U.S. or Israel to take them out.

(Of course, we can always hope that our satellites will track them back to their hidey-holes, so when hostilities do resume, we can get them before they launch).

But the technocrats pay the bills. And they know that once the Kharg storage tanks are full and no more Iranian crude can be off-loaded onto tankers because of the U.S. blockade, they won’t make payroll to the bassijis who secure the streets, the teachers, the oil workers, the bus drivers, the nurses, and all the other government employees.

The regime has missed payroll several times in recent years. Almost every time, it led to massive street demonstrations.

Both sides are becoming increasingly desperate. Vahidi is demanding that the U.S. lift the blockade as a precondition for any talks. Fat chance.

The technocrats just want to get back to the table. Any table. And who knows, maybe they will stay there and never return to Tehran.

Mostafa Najafi, a self-styled advisor to IRGC Maj. General Mohsen Rezai, said this week that the regime was in a quandary over the blockade.

“The continuation of this neither-war-nor-peace status quo under the shadow of the naval blockade is not desirable for Iran!” he wrote on X. “Tehran must make a decision! How to break the blockade without yielding to Trump’s maximum demands! Breaking the blockade is also impossible without firing shots.”

So there you have it. They are damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

Where are those pink unicorns when you need them?

I discuss this, as well as the US Navy’s trained dolphin program, the Israel-Lebanon talks, and the drip-drip of dissent in Russia, on this week’s Prophecy Today Weekend.

As always, you can listen live on 104.9 FM or 550 AM in the Jacksonville, Florida area, or by using the Jacksonville Way Radio app. If you miss us live, catch the podcast later, here.
Yours in freedom

PS: As a bonus, here’s a link to one of my appearances on Newsmax TV this week, where I talk about the benefits of the U.S. blockade. You can watch more of these clips by going to my website: https://kentimmerman.com/blog.htm

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Website: kentimmerman.com

Ken Timmerman’s 14th book of non-fiction, THE IRAN HOUSE: Tales of Revolution, Persecution, War, and Intrigue, can be ordered by clicking here or by viewing my author’s page, here. 

Raising Olives in Provence, can be ordered by clicking here.