Although U.S. President Donald Trump has sought to clamp down on terrorism from its foremost global sponsor, the Islamic Republic, he confirmed on Oct. 28 that U.S. Vice President JD Vance had written to a senior Iranian official, just days before the midterm elections, under the latest illusion of “peace negotiations.”
For the vice president of a nation regarded as the cradle of democracy and rule of law to contact Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, an Islamic criminal and veteran terrorist of the Mansouroun group, is grotesque. Trump said Vance had asked his opinion: “I said if you want to do that, that’s OK.”
What can a letter to a terrorist accomplish? What credibility can it confer? What has happened inside the White House that “destroying and changing the regime in Tehran” remains taboo? Its willingness to endure humiliation at the hands of a criminal sect in the 21st century is astonishing.
Is it fear? Fear of what? Is there a deal? Or is this merely a game masquerading as diplomacy?
Rezaei is a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and his influence in Tehran is growing. On Sunday, he met with a delegation from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. But that’s not the whole story.
In 2005, I sought cooperation with Langley and told two prominent Iran desk figures that examining the layers of power was essential to understanding Tehran’s ruling establishment. In 2012, someone from Langley met me in Athens, and our meetings continued in Washington.
Photos were exchanged, including one of my 2003 meeting and conversation with Rezaei following the American invasion of Iraq. My research then concerned Iraq, and Jalal Talabani, later president of Iraq (2005-2014), had arranged the meeting. Gen. Michael Hayden, CIA director (2006-09), also visited Iraq, and I saw him at Talabani’s residence. Talabani presented numerous gifts to Hayden and his family.
Although four terrorist groups—the Barzanis (affiliated with the Quds Force), the KDPI and Komala (connected to the regime’s Supreme National Security Council in Tehran), and the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK), the other side of the same coin as the Islamic Republic—cropped the photo, removed Talabani’s representative and Iraq’s ambassador to Tehran, and placed me beside Rezaei, they were unaware that Langley possessed the original and knew the circumstances of the meeting. Such is the backward culture, moral bankruptcy and cesspool of the fake, self-proclaimed Iranian opposition.
Nothing can be done about it. Throughout my friendly relationship with Langley, I maintained that if regime change was the objective, understanding Tehran’s layers of power was indispensable. Apparently, I was an uninvited guest, and we parted respectfully. Yet my respect endured.
This is not diplomacy. It is merely a game of words.
Later, through my Middle East research and conversations with political and intelligence figures, I learned that Rezaei, an IRGC commander and member of the Expediency Discernment Council, was eager to visit America after sending his son there. He also sought contacts with former SAVAK figures. His son was a guest of the Constitutional Party in America and even met Reza Pahlavi, the former crown prince of Iran, a meeting that did not escape Langley’s attention.
Rezaei wanted the Washington Institute to invite him to discuss the Iran-Iraq War. The CIA opposed the visit because Rezaei’s name, alongside Ahmad Vahidi’s, had surfaced in connection with the AMIA bombing in Argentina. He wanted former SAVAK and CIA figures to meet him in Pakistan, but the American embassy there was unprepared, and the meetings were canceled. The CIA knew that during the war’s early years, Rezaei had assassinated anyone he imagined had Soviet ties. He was among the ignorant, uneducated military commanders who deliberately prolonged the Iran-Iraq War, inadvertently contributing to the erosion of Ruhollah Khomeini’s regime.
Rezaei always distrusted Langley and harbored resentment toward it. He believed that they intended to eliminate him. The faction surrounding him helped create the conditions for Qassem Soleimani’s elimination in January 2020, as intelligence reached the CIA from within the labyrinthine IRGC intelligence apparatus in Tehran. During director Gina Haspel’s tenure, that intelligence enabled the veteran CIA counterterrorism official to eliminate Soleimani on Trump’s orders.
Ostensibly, Rezaei has opposed negotiations with the United States and threatened this month to expand Iranian attacks against targets in neighboring Arab countries, including data centers and internet cables. The CIA knows this unruly, obstinate, cowardly rogue, his willingness to strike deals and his boundless corruption.
Although the timing of Vance’s contact and the contents of his pleading, irrelevant letter remain unclear, judging by his mindset, one may surmise that the message referred to a new negotiating framework. Vance appears not to have listened to the radio, read a newspaper or followed the news in 50 years, seemingly unaware that Tehran sponsors terrorism. His ears are at the disposal of the Islamic Republic’s notorious lobbyists on American soil.
Just as former President Joe Biden sought to study the fictional Hidden Imam—a mythical figure invented by the Shi’ite mullahs—Vance imagines that diplomacy can be conducted with Islamic terrorists such as Vahidi and Rezaei.
Through lies, deception and trickery, for now they have kept the name of Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the slain Ali Khamenei, alive, although he does not actually exist (neither Mossad nor the CIA wishes to expose or publicize the matter). IRGC terrorists run the country, yet the regime remains a paper tiger.
Meanwhile, the struggle for power within the ruling junta is fierce. The mullahs and the IRGC have read Trump’s cards, and however often he threatens to resume bombing Iran after the Nov. 3 congressional elections, declaring, “We may do another little ‘Epic Fury,’” his warnings fall on deaf ears.
Trump is adrift, eager for an agreement, even one of merely two lines, while the Shi’ite mullahs and the IRGC mock him, offer no concessions, and erode his credibility among Iranians and internationally. Vance bears part of the responsibility, continuing to contact regime hardliners in pursuit of dead, fruitless, protracted and deceitful negotiations. Vance fails to grasp that the Islamic Caliphate of the Shi’ite Mullahs is fundamentally one entity, without hardliners or moderates. He refuses to recognize that the junta controls the hard core of power.
What will history say about the White House seeking to revive peace negotiations in 2026 by contacting Rezaei, an Iranian Islamic terrorist, through a diplomatic channel? It’s a futile endeavor. The letter was reportedly sent at Trump’s direction, with his knowledge of this shameful, nauseating and hollow diplomatic initiative. Where else does anyone seek common ground to avert war by engaging a terrorist within a warmongering, crisis-producing regime?
Unfortunately, neither Trump nor Vance understands the nature and mentality of the ruling core of the Islamic Caliphate and the Shi’ite mullahs’ religious dictatorship under the Islamic Republic. They cannot even explain the rationale behind such an undertaking. This is not diplomacy. It is merely a game of words.
It is irresponsible and immoral to portray contact with a terrorist and criminal as “an effort to provide humanitarian assistance.” Medical equipment and essential supplies do not reach the Iranian people, and the current regime is fundamentally the enemy of Iran and Iranians. Some 90 million people—subjected to oppression, repression, executions and tyranny—cry out for freedom. Amid their revolution, the voices of Trump and Vance sound like a discordant tune—a brand of shame.
Washington’s conditions for ending the war with Tehran’s war-mongering, crisis-producing regime seem equally meaningless: Wars must first be won and then followed by negotiations, not fought without objectives or plans.
One day, Vance will surely wake at 8 a.m. to discover that the Shi’ite mullahs have built their atomic bomb. He still fails to recognize that they and the IRGC will eventually announce their nuclear weapon. If securing commitments from terrorists means anything, why not allow them to establish charitable, educational and medical centers in America for Muslims worldwide?
Someone should remind Vance that Rezaei used to assassinate Americans in pre-revolutionary Iran alongside his terrorist associates in the Mansouroun group. Or does the White House now intend to invite him for a weekend at Camp David?
