The latest Iran-Oman talks on Hormuz traffic have again taken place without the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in the room, the Institute for the Study of War reported Wednesday. [1] Axios sold leadership approval of a draft. Associated Press officials said Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei had not signed. [1][2] The Guards' absence is how those two sentences can both be true.
The paper's Tuesday feature on Khamenei's ultimatum to Pezeshkian and the IRGC treated the Guards as the faction that usually wins. Wednesday did not put them at the table. It left Major General Ahmad Vahidi's anti-concession group close to the leader and off the Muscat guest list. [1]
ISW names three camps. Vahidi's will talk and reject any deal that limits Iranian control of the strait. President Masoud Pezeshkian, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, and Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf will trade more to ease economic pressure. The Paydari Front opposes talks with the United States altogether. [1] All three want Iranian control. They argue about tactics. A draft written without the IRGC is a draft the IRGC can still veto.
The one recent time the Guards lost was June, when Pezeshkian offered his resignation to push through a memorandum. [1] Wednesday produced no second resignation. Iranian officials kept calling the Oman file a technical transit arrangement, which ISW reads as evidence that consensus has not arrived. [1]
A reader who only watches Axios will think the leadership already agreed. A reader who only watches the empty chair will think nothing can move. The completed record is a draft, an absent corps, and a supreme leader whose approval AP's sources still withhold. [1][2]
The IRGC does not need a nameplate in Muscat to own the inbound channel. It owns the boats that have coerced hulls onto the Iranian route for months. [1] A technical draft written by diplomats is a suggestion until those boats stand down. Wednesday produced no communique that they would.
Vahidi's record since February is that he wins the argument more often than he loses it. [1] June was the exception because a president put his job on the table. Pezeshkian has not put it there again. Araghchi's pilgrimage last week was a calendar fact, not a coincidence. A foreign minister who is in Iraq is not initialing a strait map in Oman.
Paydari's opposition to any U.S. track is the third veto. [1] Even if the pro-concession camp likes the Axios diagram, two other camps can call it surrender. All three still want Iranian control. The empty chair is how the hardest camp keeps control without signing the softest text.
CNN noted the IRGC's absence in its live file. [1] That is the one useful sentence in a blog that otherwise sells soon. The paper will keep the chair empty until a Guard commander puts a name on the inbound-outbound split. No such name appeared Wednesday.
A draft that covers only technical transit is the foreign ministry's way of saying the Guards can still treat the inbound channel as a military file. [1] Wednesday's empty chair is that split made visible. Axios can sell approval. AP can withhold Khamenei. The corps can stay home and still own the boats. The paper will keep all three facts on the same page.
-- YOSEF STERN, Jerusalem