From i24 News – US, Iranian officials held secret talks in Iraq last week
125 Iranian officials were said to be arrested, charged with espionage in an attempt to neutralize them
Secret meetings between US government officials and Iranian officials took place last week at a hotel in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish region in Iraq, sources informed i24NEWS, as the Iranian regime shows signs of a nascent upheaval.
The Iranian delegation, which has at times been at odds with government policy, was headed by the grandson of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, Hassan Khomeini, and also included two officials from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as well as Iraj Masjedi, Iran’s special envoy to Iraq.
Iran has reportedly been contacting Kurdish opposition parties based in Iraq, but the talks remained “useless,” according to internal Iranian sources who informed i24NEWS’ senior political correspondent Christian Malard.
“The Iranian Communist Party”, one of the Kurdish opposition parties, announced that some of the major Kurdish parties have been secretly meeting with the Iranian officials for the past two years under the monitoring of a Norwegian NGO, which identity the party refused to reveal.
Sources suggest that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, especially its Basij forces — one of the five forces of the IRGC — have experienced division, suggesting Iran’s leadership is working to counter a budding soft coup.
125 Iranian officials were said to be arrested recently and charged with espionage in an attempt to neutralize them for purportedly turning their backs on the regime.
Many others have been removed from their official posts or simply disappeared from the public eye without any explanation, such as Gen. Ali Nasiri, who has likely been detained, according to sources, while others were killed in assassination plots that include fatal medical injections and car “accidents”.
During the secret talks, American officials stayed at the same hotel in Erbil as Saudi officials who were later relocated away from the negotiation venue.
Back in May, Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi said he would send delegations to both Washington and Tehran in order to calm tensions.
In March, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani made his first official visit to Iraq, despite pressure from Washington for Baghdad to limit ties with its neighbor.
Read more at i24