Who is Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the key negotiator of the US-Iran peace deal? | Today’s news

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced the conclusion of peace talks between Iran and the US early Monday morning, pending the official signing of the agreement in Switzerland on Friday, June 19.

Amidst this, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has emerged as a key negotiator and one of the most prominent figures in the Islamic Republic’s leadership as it enters a new phase after the US-Israel war.

A pillar of Iran’s establishment for about three decades and one of its most prominent non-clerical figures, Ghalibaf, 64, spearheaded the war effort and led a high-stakes negotiation process that culminated in a cease-fire agreement announced Monday.

Ghalibaf survived more than five weeks of US-Israeli attacks on Iran that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, top security official Ali Larijani and a number of other key figures.

He appeared in public for the first time in weeks in April to lead Iran’s delegation to talks in Islamabad with the United States, meeting with Vice President JD Vance, the highest-level contact between the two foes since before the 1979 Islamic revolution.

A picture posted on social media by Iranian embassies abroad put Ghalibaf in the spotlight of Iran’s negotiating team, looking animated and gesturing with his hand while Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi busied himself with cups of tea.

The functioning of Iran’s leadership without Khamenei, who has dominated it for nearly four decades, remains unclear.

Khamenei’s son Mojtaba has been named as his successor but has not yet appeared in public after he was reportedly injured in an airstrike.

“After the assassination of Larijani, Ghalibaf became the new public face of the Islamic Republic’s war effort and diplomacy,” said Farzan Sabet, a senior researcher at the Geneva Institute for Graduate Studies.

“But we should not overestimate the extent to which he is in the driver’s seat: he still corresponds to the higher powers in Tehran,” he added.

These include Mojtaba Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological arm of Iran’s armed forces, where Ghalibaf was a key figure as the commander of the air force, Sabet said.

‘Professional Negotiator’

While the trip to Islamabad was Ghalibaf’s first public appearance since before the war, he has maintained a high profile online with near-daily social media posts, mixing comments on recent developments and negotiations with threats of harsh retaliation if fighting resumes.

His posts on X in idiomatic American English gained widespread attention and raised questions about who actually writes them, as Ghalibaf is not known to be fluent in English.

Referring to the threat of a ground invasion, a post on Ghalibaf’s X account on April 1 said: “You come to our house… meet the whole family. Locked, loaded and upright. Bring it.”

The IranWire news website said the posts appeared to be written by a former adviser based in the United States, but this has not been confirmed.

While the talks in Islamabad failed, The Washington Post reported that Ghalibaf left a strong impression on the US delegation after years of Washington never dealing directly with key Iranian decision-makers.

Ghalibaf “impressed the American team as a polished and professional negotiator — and a potential leader of the new Iran,” the Post reported.

In a sign of his growing influence, he was appointed in May to oversee Iran’s vital relationship with China, the biggest buyer of Iranian oil.

“Ambitious and opportunistic”

Ghalibaf’s diverse experience, which includes both military and civilian life, has seen him serve as commander of the Revolutionary Guards, chief of the Tehran police, mayor of Tehran, and now speaker of parliament.

It is not clear whether he is fully trusted by the new hard-line Guard hierarchy.

Iran’s president, who is known to be very ambitious, has run for office on numerous occasions but never been successful, most notably in 2005 when the ultra-conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, little known at the time, took the post.

A qualified pilot, Ghalibaf is known to boast of being able to fly jumbo jets.

Rights groups have accused Ghalibaf, in his various capacities, of playing a key role in suppressing protests, from student demonstrations in 1999 to the 2009 Green Movement that erupted after disputed elections to nationwide protests that culminated in January 2026, just before the last war.

“As a politician, he has shown himself to be ambitious and opportunistic, but also cautious, a quality that helped him rise in his career to the top of the Islamic Republic’s power structure without being purged like so many others,” Sabet said.