Iran: IRGC Insists on Control of Hormuz as Araghchi Seeks Mediation
Juan Cole 04/26/2026
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi on Saturday completed the first leg of his diplomatic mission seeking further mediation of the US-Iran conflict, meeting in Pakistan with Field Marshall Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. He wrote at “X,”
- Very fruitful visit to Pakistan, whose good offices and brotherly efforts to bring back peace to our region we very much value.
Shared Iran’s position concerning workable framework to permanently end the war on Iran. Have yet to see if the U.S. is truly serious about diplomacy.
So Araghchi submitted some sort of plan to the Pakistani authorities to share with the Trump administration. He then departed for Oman for further consultations. Oman has played a key role in past US-Iran negotiations. He is said to plan to return to Pakistan before heading off for Russia. The Iranian leadership seems to be uncertain of Pakistan’s neutrality, and hence is trying to bring in more players to the negotiations.
Araghchi did not meet, and had not been planning to meet, with US negotiators Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, whom Tehran does not trust because it had been talking to them in Oman when Trump suddenly started bombing Iran.
For his part, Trump said on his Truth Social that he had called back the two envoys. He blamed “tremendous infighting and confusion within their ‘leadership,” saying “Nobody knows who is in charge, including them.” There is, however, no reason to think that the Iranian leadership is so divided as to be unable to negotiate. The pro-Israel Western press has put about a narrative that civilian pragmatists are being frozen out by the hardliners on the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). There is no evidence of any such thing, and if it were true it would be strange that Araghchi has been sent on this diplomatic mission.
Iran blames unreasonable American demands for its disinterest, for the moment, in further talks with Washington, and insists that Trump lift the American blockade on the Strait of Hormuz before they will come back to the negotiating table.
In the meantime, the IRGC issued a defiant communique via Tasnim on Saturday commemorating the US debacle on April 24, 1980, at Tabas during a failed mission to rescue US diplomats held hostage in the US embassy in Tehran by members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK or MKO) and other youth guerrilla groups.
The US Army Airborne and Special Operations Museum explains,
- “On April 24th, 1980, Operation Eagle Claw began when eight United States Navy RH-53D Sea Stallion helicopters took off from the deck of the American aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, in the Arabian Sea for a 600-mile trip to rendezvous in the Iranian desert with six C-130 transport aircrafts. The aircraft encountered a haboob, a violent wind-driven sand storm common in desert. This caused extreme visibility issues, damage to the aircrafts, and sickness with the crews. President Carter and his staff received the news and decided to abort the mission.
As the force prepared to depart, a RH-53D helicopter crashed into a C-130 carrying extra fuel for refueling igniting a fire that killed 5 Airmen and 3 Marines.”
Aftermath of Operation Eagle Claw, April, 1980. Public Domain. Picryl.
US helicopters of that time were not engineered to withstand wind storms and getting massive amounts of sand in their works, so the shamal sandstorm proved fatal to the mission. It is like something out of Dune. I remember following those events on television. At the time there was an insane ayatollah, Sadegh Khalkhali, who went out to the crash site, and in a macabre performance, he was swinging around the wrist bone of one of the American military personnel, with its watch still attached. That was a war crime.
The IRGC compared the unsuccessful Tabas mission of the Carter years to a recent alleged American operation at Isfahan to sequester Iran’s stock of highly enriched uranium, which also failed. The Trump administration has denied that there was such a mission. The IRGC warned the US not to continue to play into the hands of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom they termed a “criminal and child-killer.” They should, the IRGC warned, contemplate “their burned and destroyed bases in the region, which it is no longer possible to restore or rebuild.” It demanded an immediate and unconditional withdrawal from the region.
NBC News, in a remarkable expose, just reported that during the 39-day war this spring, Iran did much more extensive damage to US bases than Washington had admitted, and did it with a relatively primitive old F-5 fighter jet. The sight of a destroyed AWACS plane at an abandoned base did remind me a little of Tabas.
The IRGC also insisted that “management and control” of the Strait of Hormuz was their central military strategy, because of its deterrent effects on the US.
Many economists believe that the world economy, including that of the US, will go off a cliff if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed into May.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian called on Iranians to foil the American attempt to foment discontent by blockading the country’s energy supplies. He said that Washington could be countered if the public simply used less electricity and less energy. He said, “We do not need people to sacrifice their lives (fedakari) right now, but we need to control consumption; if they turn on two lights at home instead of 10 lights; what would be the problem with that?”
The president’s plea suggests that the government is already foreseeing the potential impact of the US naval blockade on domestic electricity provision. Because of the Trump-Biden maximum pressure sanctions, the public has seen rolling brownouts and blackouts in recent years.