The Trump administration is quietly weighing Iran’s parliament speaker as a potential partner — and even a future leader — as the president signals a shift from military pressure toward a negotiated endgame.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the 64-year-old who has repeatedly threatened the U.S. and its allies with retaliation, is seen by at least some in the White House as a workable partner, who could lead Iran and negotiate with the Trump administration in the war’s next phase, according to two administration officials.
But the White House isn’t ready to commit to any one person, hoping to stress test multiple candidates as they look for someone willing to make a deal, said the two people, both granted anonymity to describe internal thinking.
“He’s a hot option,” one administration official said, cautioning that no decisions have been made. “He's one of the highest…But we got to test them, and we can't rush into it.”
The administration’s interest in pinpointing a negotiating partner signals a desire to find some way out of the quagmire that Iran has quickly become, jolting world markets, spiking oil prices and renewing concern about inflation. And it hints at an answer to a critical question now that the U.S. and Israel have decimated Tehran’s leadership – what, and who, comes next?
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “These are sensitive diplomatic discussions and the United States will not negotiate through the news media.”
President Donald Trump hinted Monday at outreach to “very solid” figures inside Iran and said there would be a five day pause on “any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure” as Tehran and Washington engage in diplomatic negotiations.
The president's other big interest is an economic one: oil. According to the first official, Trump doesn’t want to take out Kharg Island, Iran’s major oil hub, because he hopes the next leader will make a deal similar to the one made by Delcy Rodríguez, Nicolás Maduro’s vice president, who took over after he was captured
“It's all about installing someone like a Delcy Rodríguez in Venezuela that we say, ‘We're going to keep you there. We're going to not take you out. You're going to work with us. You're going to give us a good deal, a first deal on the oil,’” the administration official said.
But any belief that the president can select Iran’s next leader the way he did with Rodríguez in Venezuela after the U.S. captured Maduro struck some White House allies as premature, even naive.
“It seems like posturing, like he’s trying to speak something into existence,” said one person close to the president’s national security team, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the president’s thinking. “It’s good if talks are happening through an intermediary and good that they’re starting to think about a way out of this. But Iran has proven they can take a hit and still make things difficult for us. They’re not about to roll over and give Trump their oil.”
Another person in touch with the White House, a Gulf official, suggested that Trump was overstating the progress in talks to create a pretext for walking back his own self-imposed 48-hour deadline, in which he threatened Saturday night to bomb Iran’s power plants if it didn’t reopen the Strait of Hormuz Monday.
“He’s definitely buying time and trying to stabilize markets,” said the Gulf official, who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. “What’s harder to know is if he’s serious about finding an off-ramp or if he’s putting unrealistic demands out there so that Iran will say no.”
Some are also skeptical that Ghalibaf, a former mayor of Tehran, would be as pliant as Rodríguez.
"Ghalibaf is a quintessential insider: ambitious and pragmatic, yet fundamentally committed to the preservation of Iran’s Islamist order,” said Ali Vaez, a senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group. “That makes him an unlikely candidate to offer Washington any meaningful concessions. And even if he were inclined to test the boundaries, Iran’s military establishment and the broader security elite would almost certainly constrain him. In the aftermath of U.S. and Israeli actions, the mood in Tehran is not one of flexibility but deep mistrust; the system as a whole sees little reason to believe that either Trump or Israel would honor the terms of any prospective agreement."
Still, many in the administration see Venezuela, a largely successful operation, as a model for what is still possible in Iran. That’s why exiled opposition figure Reza Pahlavi is considered an unlikely option by the U.S. The administration does not believe he would have legitimacy inside Iran, the two administration officials said.
“Now do you put in Reza Pahlavi? God, no…He grew up outside. That is the last thing you want to install there. That'll mean chaos,’ the first official said. The second administration also confirmed Pahlavi is “not on the table.”
Instead, the first official added, the focus is on figures who already hold power inside the system — “looking for the equivalents of the Chavistas” – referring to the political movement named after former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez. In Iran, that search is increasingly pointing toward the speaker of parliament.
Ghalibaf denied any negotiations with the U.S. on Monday, but administration officials dismissed his comments as internal posturing.
“We're in the testing phase of really trying to figure out who can rise, who wants to rise, who tries to rise,” the first official said. “And then as people rise, we'll do a quick test, and if they're radical, we'll take them out.”
A senior White House official said Trump is interested in pursuing a peace deal with Iran this week because he’s looking for “progress” in the Strait of Hormuz and a ceasefire.
"POTUS, like anyone, would rather have peace than war,” the senior White House official added.
Nahal Toosi contributed to this report.
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