Will Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf lead Iran's negotiations in Pakistan? Here's what we know

Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, will head the Iranian negotiating team for talks with US Vice President JD Vance in Islamabad, Pakistan, on Friday, 10 April, news agency Reuters said, citing ISNA news agency.

However, another Reuters report, citing Tasnim News Agency, said Iran has not yet decided who will head the delegation.

Earlier, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said it had accepted a two-week ceasefire announced by US President Donald Trump late Tuesday night (US time). The statement said it would begin negotiations with the United States in Islamabad on Friday.

Trump announced that he had agreed to suspend military actions against Iran for 15 days, citing progress in negotiations and diplomatic interventions by Pakistan.

“Based on conversations with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, of Pakistan, and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran… I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The delegations from both sides are expected to meet in Islamabad on 10 April, following a ceasefire arrangement shaped by Tehran’s reported conditions.

The upcoming talks are seen as the first direct contact between the two sides after weeks of heightened tensions, with the discussions expected to focus on the framework of a possible long-term settlement.

Who is Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf?

Born in 1961, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf grew up in a grocer's family near Mashhad in Iran’s northeast. Like many young men of his generation, he joined the paramilitary Guard during the country’s 1980s war with Iraq, quickly rising through the ranks. He served as the head of the Guard’s construction arm, Khatam al-Anbia, for several years, leading efforts to rebuild.

Iranian state-owned Press TV reported in 2024 that Ghalibaf, as a teenager, founded the Islamic Students’ Association with his classmates, which eventually became a national organisation.

Trained as a pilot, he then served as the head of the Guard’s air force. In 1999, he cosigned a letter to reformist President Mohammad Khatami amid student protests in Tehran over the government’s closure of a reformist newspaper and a subsequent security force crackdown.

The letter warned Khatami that the Guard would take action unilaterally unless he agreed to put down the demonstrations.

Ghalibaf then became the head of Iran’s police, modernising the force and implementing the country’s 110 emergency phone number.

Graft charges

Ghalibaf faced corruption allegations as Tehran’s mayor from 2005 to 2017. He was accused of donating around $3.5 million to a foundation run by his wife. His critics would claim Qalibaf was like Reza Pahlavi, a hard-charging soldier who became shah in 1925 and rapidly pushed to Westernise Persia and rename it Iran before handing power to his son Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, according to a profile by news agency AP.

6 Weeks of the Iran War

It's been six weeks since the West Asia war began with joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran. Tensions escalated following the killing of 86-year-old Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the military strikes on 28 February.

In retaliation, Iran targeted Israeli and US assets across several Gulf countries, impacting international energy markets as well as global economic stability and disrupting trade routes through the Strait of Hormuz.

The fighting has left thousands dead, most of them in Iran and Lebanon, and brought vessel traffic through Hormuz — through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas exports normally flow — to a near standstill.

(With Reuters inputs)