A report said Steve Witkoff, U.S. President Donald Trump's special envoy for the Middle East, and Iran's Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi are in unofficial contact. Minister Araghchi, a representative hard-line politician in Iran, is emerging as the only communication channel that credit entry the current Iranian regime.
On the 23rd (local time), President Trump abruptly said, "We had a productive conversation with Iran to resolve the war," hinting at the possibility of an end to the conflict. It came just two days after he gave Iran a 48-hour deadline pressing for the opening of the Strait of Hormuz and declared that, if ignored, he would devastate Iran's power infrastructure.
According to President Trump, the two countries are expected to begin talks as early as this week, and Iran's Foreign Ministry also acknowledged receiving a message from the United States requesting negotiations. On the Iranian side, parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, a former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) general, has been mentioned as the counterpart, and Minister Araghchi has also been known to be conducting communication on the front line.
Previously, Minister Araghchi positioned himself as the "external channel" credit entry Iran's official stance in the international community. In response to President Trump's demand to open the Strait of Hormuz, he said, "The reason for hesitating to transit is not Iran, but that insurers fear the war you chose," and, regarding the U.S. move to form a "naval coalition," he revealed a will to fight by saying, "Iran does not beg for a truce."
Even when key figures supporting the Iranian regime were assassinated, he emphasized, "There is no room for truce talks," and, with hard-line external messages, established himself as a key figure credit entry Iran's position against the United States and Israel.
Born in Tehran, Iran, in 1962, Araghchi earned a bachelor's in international relations and a master's in political science from the Iran University of International Relations and Islamic Azad University, and later received a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Kent in the United Kingdom. He has served at Iran's Foreign Ministry since 1989, was Iran's ambassador to Finland and ambassador to Japan, served as Vice Minister for Asia-Pacific and the Commonwealth at Iran's Foreign Ministry, and took office as foreign Minister in 2024.
In particular, he served about 10 years in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in his teens, and it is believed that he formed a hard-line political line through the Iranian Revolution that toppled the Pahlavi dynasty and the Iran-Iraq War.
In Western diplomatic circles, Araghchi made his name by leading nuclear talks, and he has been identified as the most influential foreign Minister in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 2015, when Iran reached a nuclear deal with the so-called "P5+1" countries—the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, and the European Union (EU)—Araghchi served as Iran's chief negotiator, and he had also sat as a representative in the preceding nuclear talks in Geneva, Switzerland.
As a negotiator, Minister Araghchi is generally classified as a calm and pragmatic figure. Richard Nephew, a senior research scholar at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy who led working-level negotiations on the Iran nuclear deal under the Obama administration, said, "Minister Iraghchi did not particularly like the United States, but he believed that reaching a reliable agreement served the national interest."
At the same time, there is also an assessment that he often raised the difficulty of negotiations with tactics such as overturning agreements at the last minute or unleashing hard-line remarks. Wendy Sherman, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State who took part in the 2015 nuclear talks, said, "He sometimes showed a human side, such as showing photos of his grandchildren," but added, "At the last moment of negotiations, he would bring up issues already compromised, employing a strategy that delayed a deal."
Minister Araghchi himself also appears to have emphasized negotiations as a diplomatic strategy. In his book "The Power of Negotiation," he likened his diplomatic approach to "Iranian-style bazaar bargaining," arguing that only by repeatedly haggling while mobilizing various lines of reasoning can one produce satisfactory results.
In political circles, there is also a view that Minister Araghchi's rise could affect Iran's power structure going forward. He has previously served as a bridge among various political forces and is assessed as an ambitious figure eyeing the presidency in the future.
However, some point out that he lacks a strong political base or broad public support, and that limited understanding of U.S. politics could cause clashes with the Trump administration's diplomatic style. Ali Vaez, an Iran expert at the International Crisis Group (ICG), assessed Minister Araghchi by saying, "He is an obvious executor," and, "He was not someone accustomed to policymaking."