Rome, August 16, 2026 – The Americans are negotiating, but they probably still haven’t really understood with whom. This seems to be the moral of the news revealed by Axios, according to which officials of the Trump administration bypassed Iranian negotiators and sought a direct channel with the head of the Revolutionary Guards, Ahmad Vahidi, to reach an agreement to end the war.
To do this, Washington relied on Nechirvan Barzani, president of the Iraqi Kurdistan Autonomous Region, one of the few men in the region to simultaneously enjoy American trust and that of important sectors of the Iranian apparatus. Barzani would have effectively managed to establish contact and Vahidi would have assured that he shared the agreement then under discussion. However, the agreement would have collapsed shortly thereafter.
The rule of taqiyya
The point is to understand whether they were really clever or if they simply fell into a trap set by Iran, which according to some analysts, applied the rule of taqiyya, that is, dissimulation. Born mainly as a tool to protect a minority community subjected to persecution, it allowed the believer to conceal their faith or their beliefs when openly manifesting them would have meant exposing themselves to serious danger. During the persecutions of Shiite communities under the Umayyads and Abbasids, the practice took on particular importance in the Shiite faith and now it may have been ‘dusting off’ in an unprecedented way.
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The two faces of Iran
The Americans would therefore have been misled. They did not so much know if the Iranian negotiators were lying, but whether the negotiators really had the power to maintain the conditions they were setting. A situation of uncertainty and vulnerability made possible also by the complex overlap between the different levels of power. There is the Iran of institutions, government, and diplomacy, but alongside it exists that of the Guide, the security apparatus, and especially the Pasdaran. The latter are not simply a military force. They constitute a political, economic, and security system that exerts a decisive influence on the country’s strategic choices. The war has further shifted the center of gravity in this direction, strengthening the Revolutionary Guards’ control over national security and foreign policy.
The ghost of Mojtaba and the US weak point
The ability to keep secret who actually holds power in Iran and who has decision-making power represents, almost six months after the start of the conflict, one of the strengths of the Islamic Republic. The most vivid example of what has been described is the fate of the Supreme Leader himself, Mojtaba Khamenei. Since his election last March, which took place after the assassination of his father, no one has seen him or heard his voice, says President Massoud Pezeskhian. Taqiyya thus shows how opacity and ambiguity have become real weapons in the hands of a regime less strong on the field, but smarter in terms of strategy and above all having grasped one of the opponent’s weakest points: ignoring who the real enemy is.
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