The White House established a secret backchannel with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to a Sunday report, which said that the United States has been informed that the IRGC stands behind the positions of the Iranian negotiators in their talks with Washington.

According to Axios, citing three unnamed sources, US officials feared that talks with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf were liable to be undermined by the IRGC, which is thought to be the most powerful group behind Iran’s leadership.

In May, three months into the war launched by the US and Israeli strikes, then-director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard reached out to Nechirvan Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan region in Iraq, who has close ties to the IRGC, to attempt to find out the position of its leader, Gen. Ahmad Vahidi.

A few days later, Barzani arranged a phone call with Vahidi, during which the general assured him that the IRGC backed Araghchi and Ghalibaf, the report said.

“I fully support them and this is also the position of the IRGC. We prefer to solve this crisis through negotiations,” Axios quoted him as saying. His message was quickly passed to the White House via Gabbard.

The Trump administration sought to expand Barzani’s role by having him host direct talks between the US and Iran in Erbil, Iraq, but the Iranians declined due to fears that representatives would be targeted by Israel, which was thought to have a strong intelligence presence in Kurdistan, the report added.

That meeting never took place, but Iranian and US officials attended a summit the next month, where they signed a framework for peace talks, which have since collapsed.

Gabbard has also since left her position.

Iran and the........

© The Times of Israel