US vice president JD Vance has opened a direct channel to one of Iran’s most powerful hard-liners in an attempt to revive peace negotiations according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. This developments comes even as US president Donald Trump threatens to resume military strikes in the coming weeks.
Vance sent a letter to Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in an outreach intended to test whether Washington and Tehran can agree on a framework for negotiations. The letter was sent at Trump’s direction, according to one person familiar with the matter cited by WSJ, and the president is aware of the initiative.
The effort comes as Trump weighs a short, intense new attack on Iran after next week’s US midterm elections. Vance is seeking to establish whether diplomacy can avert another round of fighting, though the discussions have yet to produce a detailed peace proposal. Rezaei said last week that Iran would not negotiate with Washington until its core demands were met.
The outreach marks a delicate balancing act for Vance, who has publicly backed the war but privately expressed reservations about prolonging it.
Before Trump launched “Operation Epic Fury” in February, Vance argued for more robust diplomacy. Trump later appointed him lead negotiator, and the vice president travelled abroad twice to meet Iranian counterparts in pursuit of an agreement to end the conflict.
A memorandum of understanding reached in June collapsed just two weeks after it was signed, amid competing interpretations of how shipping through the Strait of Hormuz would be restored. Subsequent negotiations, mediated by Qatar and Pakistan, have failed to break the deadlock. Washington wants Iran to make nuclear concessions upfront, while Tehran is demanding immediate economic relief.
Rezaei’s emergence as a key interlocutor could also reshape the diplomatic process, potentially sidelining figures such as Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi and parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. A veteran of Iran’s 1980s war with Iraq who led the IRGC for years, Rezaei has become an influential voice as the threat of renewed US attacks grows.
Earlier this month, he warned that Iran could target the United Arab Emirates, as well as data centres and internet cables across the region. On Sunday, he met security chiefs from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey in Tehran in a rare engagement at that level, as regional powers sought to contain the conflict.
Trump, meanwhile, has alternated between pursuing a diplomatic settlement and threatening to bomb Iran into submission, with dismantling its nuclear programme a central national-security priority of his second term. He said last week that Washington was not negotiating with Tehran and suggested military action was imminent. During a campaign stop on Tuesday, he accused Iran of dragging out efforts to reach a deal and warned that waiting until after the election would not help it.
Republicans face the prospect of losing seats in the House and Senate in the midterms, with voters citing the war and rising fuel prices among their concerns. Vance, an early contender for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, is therefore navigating a conflict that carries both foreign-policy and domestic political risks.
Trump has said the war will end only when he decides it should. Whether Vance’s backchannel can create a viable diplomatic path before the president orders another attack remains an open question.