By Laurence Norman in Berlin and Benoit Faucon in London
Iran's combative Parliament speaker, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, is emerging as an unlikely figure in Washington's search for a deal to halt a widening Middle East war.
Ghalibaf, a former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps air-force commander and Tehran mayor, has denied any talks with the U.S. are under way. He has taunted President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and called the U.S.-Israeli air war with Iran a quagmire. He served in the Revolutionary Guard during Iran's brutal war with Iraq in the 1980s and is known as a hard-liner's hard-liner.
At the same time, he is credited with helping to modernize Tehran while he was mayor, becoming famous for riding his motorcycle around town and expanding major highways and the metro system in a traffic-clogged city. In 2008, he traveled to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, portraying himself as a leader with a more business-friendly attitude than other parts of the regime.
Ghalibaf is among a small group of regime figures who fit the profile of someone the U.S. can work with, analysts said. Despite his bombastic rhetoric, Iran watchers said he has in the past demonstrated some pragmatism, which, combined with his regime bona fides, could position him as a viable interlocutor.
"Ghalibaf is Iran's wannabe strongman," said Sina Azodi, director of Middle East studies at George Washington University. "A hard-liner with a pragmatic streak."
"He's someone with the necessary credentials to deliver a potential deal with the Trump administration," Azodi added.
Those credentials include frequent posts on X that project a hard-line image with little room for negotiation.
"Our people demand the complete and humiliating punishment of the aggressors," he posted Monday on X. "No negotiations with America have taken place. Fake news is intended to manipulate financial and oil markets and to escape the quagmire in which America and Israel are trapped."
He has called on Iran's neighbors to expel U.S. forces and warned that countries buying U.S. debt could be treated as adversaries. He has openly mocked Washington.
"So what do you think, Tele-General Hegseth?" he wrote March 14 on X. "They are sending poor boys to fix what the generals broke. Go die for Israel."
Threats aside, some analysts said they think he could be the kind of leader Trump might work with if the regime remains in power. He has held many top political and military positions over the past 30 years, and he maintains close ties to the Revolutionary Guard, the country's powerful military and economic entity.
He was born in 1961 in Torghabeh, near Mashhad, a city of religious importance in Iran's northeast and the hometown of the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Ghalibaf joined the revolutionary movement during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. He rose quickly to command units in some of the conflict's toughest battles. His ties to Khamenei helped propel him into a series of senior posts after Khamenei became supreme leader.
Ghalibaf is considered ruthless and ambitious but also a competent manager.
After a stint as head of the police, he became mayor of Tehran in 2005, a position he held for 12 years. As a politician, he is something of a populist. He has drawn allegations of corruption -- which he has denied -- and been lambasted for allegedly amassing personal wealth.
Ghalibaf has posted video showing him piloting aircraft and became famous as mayor for riding his motorcycle, cultivating a strongman persona that some Iran watchers have compared to Russian President Vladimir Putin. During the June war with Israel, he moved around Tehran by motorcycle to evade detection, making him "the most mobile" official among Iran's leadership, he said in a September interview with the conservative outlet Majaraa Media.
He has also bloodied his hands in suppressing political dissent. In 1999, he signed a letter along with other leaders warning the reformist Mohammad Khatami, who was then president, that if he didn't crack down on student protests, they would.
In 2013, the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran said it had obtained a recording of Ghalibaf as he boasted about his role in such crackdowns, including the use of wooden sticks to beat rioters in 1999. Referring to another round of student demonstrations in 2003, he is recorded saying he threatened to "demolish anyone who would show up tonight" to protest.
His history of repression is unlikely to be of much concern to Washington, said Michael Singh, a former U.S. National Security Council official who worked on Iran.
"Trump has always indicated he envisioned this war ending with a diplomatic understanding similar to the one he reached with Venezuela," Singh said.
The U.S. captured the Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro, in a raid, and has worked with his successor, Delcy Rodríguez. "The denouement here will be very different...but Trump may not care if he can claim to have addressed U.S. concerns," Singh said.
More practically, Ghalibaf is only one of the few Iranian leaders at the center of the power structure that is still alive. In June, during Israeli and U.S. strikes on Iran, Ghalibaf played a role in coordinating responses.
He was among the few officials to meet face-to-face with Khamenei during the 12-day war with Israel, said Iranian and Arab officials briefed on the wartime effort. Saudi and Omani officials said that, in the run-up to the current war, they saw Ghalibaf as the most-powerful politician to emerge if Iran faced a sustained crisis.
Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the Crisis Group, a conflict-resolution organization, said that for all Ghalibaf's strongman bravado, he has skirted political risks. Ghalibaf might not be willing to take on hard-line factions who oppose engaging yet again in fruitless negotiations with the Americans.
Ghalibaf "has proven to be a cautious man in the past," Vaez said. "If he is to become Iran's Delcy Rodríguez...he has to alienate some other members of the Revolutionary Guard who might seek to constrain him."
Write to Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com and Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 24, 2026 22:00 ET (02:00 GMT)
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