IRGC calls Trump’s claims of backchannel talks ‘delusions’
The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has dismissed claims by US President Donald Trump that his administration held backchannel talks with the elite Iranian military force in May.
IRGC spokesman Brigadier General Hossein Mohebbi said on Monday that Trump’s assertion earlier in the day that his representatives had opened a direct backchannel with Iran was a lie.
“Trump's claim about backchannel talks with the IRGC is delusions stemming from defeat… this lie by Trump is merely fantasy born of the delusions and nightmares resulting from defeat and desperation in the war,” Mohebbi was quoted as saying by the semi-official Tasnim news agency.
Mohebbi emphasized that no negotiations have been underway between IRGC officials and the Americans since the start of the US-Israeli aggression against Iran in late February, and throughout the past six months when Iran and the US have gone through periods of indirect negotiations.
“The IRGC is the arm and voice of the power of the Iranian nation and the Islamic Republic, and it speaks its word on the battlefield; diplomatic matters fall within the purview of other sectors of the Islamic Republic,” said the IRGC official.
He added that such claims are only an attempt by Trump to temporarily control the price of oil and energy in the world amid Iran’s firm control over the Strait of Hormuz - a key waterway in the Persian Gulf that handles around a fifth of the global oil shipments.
“Trump's mental fantasies will not help him on the battlefield,” Mohebbi said, adding that the only way for Trump and the Americans to save their country from “greater and more extensive losses” is to accept defeat and implement the conditions set by Iran to restore normal oil transit in the Persian Gulf.
In a Monday interview with Fox News, Trump appeared to confirm reports that Washington had engaged in backchannel talks with the IRGC.
That came a day after Axios reported that in May, US negotiators trying to reach a deal with Iran to end the war went around Iran's negotiators and reached out directly to the IRGC leadership through Nechirvan Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan region in Iraq.
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