Asked about the setbacks in negotiations with Iran, Vance cited two factors: “Number one, the Iranians are extraordinarily difficult people. Number two, they have a fractured system.”
“There are people within their system that want the war to be over and there are also people in their system that are crazy radicals who want the war to continue,” he said.
“Our job is to navigate through that and get the best outcome for the American people and for the President of the United States as well.”
In the mid-1980s, Rezaei became involved in secret contacts with the United States during the Iran-Contra affair, in which Iran received American weapons while proceeds from the arms sales were diverted to support the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
Former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani once told local media that his nephew, Ali Hashemi, a key intermediary in contacts with the administration of then-US President Ronald Reagan, had informed him and, subsequently, Rezaei about meetings with American officials.
It is worth recalling that the conflict did not begin over disputes about the Strait of Hormuz. As recently as February 28, commercial ships transited the waterway without restriction.
(…)
With the US maintaining the naval blockade during the ceasefire period, Iran responded by stopping and, in several cases, attacking vessels attempting to cross the Strait without its approval. Insurance rates spiked, shipping lines rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope, and transit times increased by up to three weeks.
Wars of this nature benefit no party in the long term, and they rarely reach a logical conclusion. Their primary victims are innocent civilians who have no role in the conflict. Many civilians in Iran and Lebanon have lost their lives directly to strikes.
It was in this climate that a leaked video of Mohammad-Bagher Kharrazi, the brother-in-law of Masoud Khamenei, the younger brother of Iran’s supreme leader, emerged as part of what critics describe as a broader hard-line campaign.
In the video, Kharrazi claimed that Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei had “formally and publicly announced” that if Pezeshkian attempts to resign one more time, his resignation would be accepted.
(…)
Soon afterward, however, another audio file surfaced in which Ali Saeedi, a conservative senior figure close to the Khamenei‘s office, claimed that the supreme leader had expressed support for the negotiations and criticised hard-line opposition to diplomacy.
According to Saeedi, Khamenei told one of his brothers: “I have never opposed negotiations, and I still do not. I was the one who authorised the negotiations, and I am not satisfied with the hard-line positions adopted by some people.”
Saeedi also claimed that Khamenei supports Ghalibaf, saying: “He is like [the late Quds Force commander] Haj Qassem Soleimani.”
Khoshcheshm noted the appointments could also herald a major restructuring of Iran’s security and military apparatus, with a greater focus on pre-emptive strikes and more powerful responses to any US attack.
While he does not believe Iran would attack the US “offhand with no reason”, he says the new leadership is preparing Iran to develop its capabilities for pre-emptive strikes and stronger attacks on US military forces and positions in the region.
He described the appointments as creating a “more offensive-minded leadership for Iran’s security establishment across the board”.
Rezaei is a commander who holds some of the most closely guarded secrets of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war and the IRGC‘s founding years, and for just as long, he‘s been a favorite target of Iranian political satire. Now, at 71, he‘s back at the center of the Islamic republic‘s security decision-making.
Rezaei traded his uniform for politics in 1997 and ran for president four times, dropping out before the vote in 2005, then losing in 2009, 2013, and 2021, never pulling in more than about 3.9 million votes.
The appointments came one day after Khamenei named Major General Mohsen Rezaei as his representative to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) and appointed outgoing SNSC secretary Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr as his political adviser.
President Masoud Pezeshkian separately appointed Rezaei as secretary of the SNSC, replacing Zolghadr.
Cenk Uygur and John Iadarola discuss how Trump’s war with Iran is pushing Tehran to dig in for a prolonged conflict.
(August 6, 2026)
In recent weeks, Iran has gone on the offensive, striking commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz and launching a surprise attack on U.S. forces in Jordan. From a distance, these moves look like self-defeating escalation. Why should a badly damaged state, under severe economic pressure, lash out at the U.S. instead of pushing for a ceasefire?
The answer, simply put, is that Iran is digging in for a long war. Whatever Washington‘s intentions, Tehran increasingly interprets sanctions, negotiations, temporary ceasefires and military strikes as different instruments aimed at a single objective: regime change.
As long as this primary objective remains, Iran expects no sanctions relief or meaningful de-escalation. My conversations with Iranian foreign policy analysts suggest that Tehran now believes the war will continue in different forms until the end of Donald Trump‘s presidency.
Iran’s politburo-like body known as the Supreme National Security Council says the Strait of Hormuz will not open until the United States “corrects its behavior,” and issues drastic new demands that could shake up talks on a deal to manage the waterway and traffic on it.
Iran’s state broadcaster publishes the statement by the council’s secretary, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, who is also a commander in the powerful Revolutionary Guard.
(August 7, 2026)
He has always had a rather delusional — and at times almost comical — view of security and intelligence affairs. He has a profoundly disturbed mind and a brain empty of knowledge, yet he is highly deceptive and destructive.
Like other Guard officers who once served as secretaries of the Supreme National Security Council, he is intensely anti-Israel. He will therefore naturally pursue the Iranian regime’s terrorist plans against Israel and greater coordination with terrorist groups across the Shiite crescent. Although the illusion that Mojtaba Khamenei is still alive continues to be raised, Rezaei is among those who fight for the survival of power and preservation of the regime.
(August 6, 2026)
Iranian media reported on Thursday that former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Mohsen Rezaei had been appointed secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC).
You are an idiot. And you‘re not alone with that. Even a small group of people out of the eight billion people on Earth could have stopped the West Asia War; the onslaught in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran and even in Israel. But not a single parliament, lawmaker, NGO, journalist, or whatever-movement on Earth, not even the Good Guys, have been digging into the core of the issue; of what really happened.
And I can prove it.
“If you enter the Persian Gulf, first of all, we will give a tough, painful and unprecedented response and break the naval blockade,” he warned Washington.
“But more importantly, we may withdraw from the NPT. Do you know what will happen to you if we withdraw? So… don‘t commit suicide.”