US-Iran Negotiation Insider Revealed, Trump Administration Once Bypassed Iranian Negotiator to Contact Revolutionary Guard

BlockBeats News, August 16th, according to AXIOS citing three sources, in mid-May, U.S. negotiators ran into a problem while trying to reach a peace agreement with Iran: they couldn't confirm whether the Iranian representative across the negotiating table truly represented the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Therefore, Trump administration officials took an unusual approach—bypassing the Iranian negotiating representative and directly contacting senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leaders.

The individual chosen by the U.S. to handle this secret communication channel was Nechirvan Barzani, the President of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. He had an extremely rare advantage: earning the trust of both the U.S. and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leadership. One major reason why negotiations between the U.S. and Iran were so challenging is that Washington couldn't determine who actually held Iran's decision-making power. While the U.S. and Iran did eventually reach a memorandum of understanding, it quickly fell apart.