Muhammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian regime’s parliament, has reportedly been floated as a potential negotiating partner for Trump. Despite his explicit denials of being involved in any talks with the US, Ghalibaf has become the subject of intense media speculation. Much of it has missed the mark when it comes to his wider role in Iran’s political system. In reality, Ghalibaf is a remarkably capable administrator, with bold economic ideas that could reshape Iran. His approach may represent the regime’s last viable chance to adapt and survive. This makes him simultaneously alluring and dangerous for Trump and the West.

The Daily Mail recently labelled Ghalibaf an “infamous butcher” for his alleged role in repressing the 1999 student protests. The current regime in Iran, though, is inherently based upon repression and violence. As such, no current or former official is truly uninvolved, not even many of the so-called ‘reformists’. Who can judge whether a street-level enforcer is more contemptible than the office-based pen-pusher who ensures that the street-level enforcer receives his salary on time? The question is best left to moral philosophers. It has little analytical value when it comes to understanding what role Iran’s parliament speaker might play in any negotiations with Washington.

Allegations of corruption, too, make for juicy headlines, but hardly matter. In a meritocratic, market-based economy, a corrupt official can be singled out as individually problematic, noteworthy in his own right. However, in Iran’s nepotistic, family-ties-based economic system, corruption is not a bug. It is the system itself. This has been so for hundreds of years, even before the current regime came into existence. In such a system, an honest official would likely be incapable of wielding influence or fulfilling his tasks. Why would the West wish to negotiate with someone who can’t get the job done?

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf himself is remarkably clear-eyed about the realities of the regime he serves. In a 2017 speech, widely reported in Iranian media, he said that the Iranian government was no longer serving the people. Instead, the government is serving the interests of a mere “4%” of the population: namely those who seek profit “without any effort, through rent-seeking, influence-peddling, administrative and financial corruption, or policy manipulation”. These profiteers, Ghalibaf argued, prevent the hardships faced by “96%” of the Iranian population from being addressed. The taboo-breaking, but fundamentally accurate speech triggered immediate backlash.

Ghalibaf has the standing to speak out because he is seen as someone whose loyalty is beyond doubt. According to claims published by the opposition media outlet IRBriefing and not yet independently verified, Ghalibaf’s mother comes from Khameneh in Iranian-Azerbaijan, the ancestral village of the now-deceased former dictator Ayatollah Khamenei. Back when the previous Pahlavi regime was still in power, the teenage Ghalibaf reportedly first distinguished himself by attending sermons given by Imam Khamenei and other rebellious, hard-line clerics like Abdolkarim Hasheminejad at a mosque in Mashhad, in north-eastern Iran.

When the Iran-Iraq War broke out not........

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