He is, according to President Donald Trump, a “top person” in the Iranian system who is “most respected” and is in an unenviable position.

But who is the senior figure talking with the United States on the future of Iran after over three weeks of the Israeli-US war against the Islamic republic?

The individual, said Trump, is not supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who succeeded his father, Ali Khamenei, after the killing of the ex-number one at the start of the war on February 28.

After the killing of national security chief Ali Larijani in an Israeli strike last week, attention has focused on parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who has survived the war so far.

But Trump gave no names, saying: “I don’t want him to be killed.”

Here are five possible figures.

Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf

Ghalibaf has been pinpointed by several analysts as the de-facto wartime leader of Iran following the assassination of Khamenei and Larijani and the failure of Mojtaba Khamenei to make any public appearance.

During three decades at the centre of the Iranian system he has held posts straddling civilian and military life, as commander of the aerospace forces of the Revolutionary Guards, Tehran police chief, Tehran mayor and now parliament speaker.

Regarded as deeply ambitious, he stood for president on three occasions but was never successful. After a report in Israeli media said he was the interlocutor of the US, he posted on X that “no negotiations have been held with the US” and denounced “fakenews”.

President Masoud Pezeshkian

President since 2024 after an election held following the death of former president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash, Pezeshkian is seen as belonging to the more moderate wing of politics in the Islamic republic.

However, his position as president in no way makes him Iran’s number one, with the supreme leader having the final say on all key matters, although how the power structures work in the post-Ali Khamenei era remains unclear.

Seeking to promote himself as an ordinary man of the people, Pezeshkian took to the streets earlier this month for a mass pro-government rally in favour of the Palestinian cause, taking selfies with well-wishers. Larijani also took part in the same event, only to be killed days later.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi

A veteran diplomat, Araghchi has held the post since 2024 following the death of former foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian in the same helicopter crash that killed Raisi.

He acted as Iran’s representative in talks last month with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Oman that were mediated by the Gulf sultanate and failed to stop the march to war.

The New York Times said Tuesday, citing US and Iranian officials, that Araghchi and Witkoff had “direct communication” in recent days, which, according to Iranian officials, amounted to “essentially probes on how to de-escalate the conflict”.

Araghchi, who holds a doctorate in political thought from the University of Kent in England, has vigorously defended Iran’s position in TV interviews including with American media. But his position as foreign minister seems unlikely to equate to that of a “top person”.

Revolutionary Guards Commander-in-Chief Ahmad Vahidi

A former interior and defence minister, Vahidi is the third commander-in-chief of Iran’s ideological army in less than a year after his predecessor Mohammad Pakpour was killed on the first day of the war and Hossein Salami was killed during Israel’s 12-day war against Iran in June 2025.

Possibly for this reason, Vahidi has kept a very low profile in this war, making no public appearance.

Only one statement has been issued in his name as commander on March 19, expressing his condolences for the killing of the commander of the Guards’ Basij militia, Gholamreza Soleimani, in an airstrike.

Quds force commander Esmail Ghaani

Ghaani became commander of the force responsible for the external operations of the Revolutionary Guards after the killing of Qassem Soleimani in a US strike in Iraq in 2020.

Ghaani was reportedly killed in the June 2025 war, but then later re-emerged in public. Intense speculation has since surrounded his whereabouts and standing, amid reports he has come under pressure due to alleged intelligence lapses, including the 2024 killing in Lebanon by Israel of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.

NEW DELHI: Soaring black-market prices of cooking gas in India’s capital are pushing poorer families back to wood and coal, raising health risks and worsening air quality in the highly polluted megacity.

India is the world’s second-largest buyer of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), which is used for cooking and predominantly sourced from the Middle East — and supplies have been strangled by the ongoing war.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged states to curb black marketing and avoid panic, stressing that India’s energy supplies remain stable.

In the low-income Madanpur Khadar neighbourhood, 36-year-old domestic helper Sheela Kumari says she has been forced to abandon LPG cooking gas cylinders for cooking after prices more than doubled.

“We used to buy cylinders for INR 1,800-2,000 ($19-$21), but now on the black market it has gone up to 5,000 ($53),” she told AFP, nearly as much as she entire monthly salary of INR 6,000.

“It is unimaginable for us,” she said. “The next best option for us was going back to wood and coal.”

Kumari said a 14 kilogramme cylinder lasts only 15-20 days for her family of six, even when they stretch its use out.

But she says a 10 kilogramme bundle of firewood, lasting several days, costs 30 rupees ($0.30).

“There are health repercussions, and my children cough,” she said. “But tell me a way out?”

‘Too expensive’

Her neighbour, 45-year-old Munni Bai, who has asthma, had switched to using an electric cooker as well as biogas from cow dung, to help her breathing.

But now she said she was being forced to resume use of alternative fuels.

“Gas is too expensive,” she said. “We cannot depend on it — we moved from coal and wood, due to my health issue, but now it is difficult to sustain.”

But activists say the problem is more about access.

Many migrant workers lack documentation needed for subsidised LPG and rely on informal markets, where hoarding has pushed up prices.

“There is no major shortage yet, but hoarding has increased,” said Deepak, who uses only one name, from the Centre for Advocacy and Research (CFAR).

“Many migrants depend on black-market cylinders, and prices have gone up two to three times”.

New Delhi, and its wider sprawling metropolitan region of 30 million residents, is regularly ranked among the world’s most polluted capitals, due to a deadly mix of emissions from power plants, heavy traffic, as well as the burning of rubbish and crops.

For the past decades, India’s government has pushed its “Ujjwala” or “light” clean-energy scheme, to provide over 100 million LPG connections to poor households.

Burning wood, coal and biomass indoors exposes families to high levels of smoke and toxic particles, increasing the risk of respiratory illnesses.

Women and children, who spend more time near cooking areas, are especially vulnerable.

• Netanyahu lobbied hard for Iran attack.
• Rubio warned US facilities will be targeted.
• Operation Epic Fury launched Feb 27.
  

Less than 48 hours before the US-Israeli strike on Iran began, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke by phone to President Donald Trump about the reasons for launching the kind of complex, far-off war the American leader once had campaigned against.

Both Trump and Netanyahu knew from intelligence briefings earlier in the week that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his key lieutenants would soon meet at his compound in Tehran, making them vulnerable to a “decapitation strike” — an attack against a country’s top leaders often used by Israelis but traditionally less so by the United States.

But new intelligence suggested that the meeting had been moved from Saturday night to Saturday morning, according to three people briefed on the call.

The call has not been previously reported.

Netanyahu, ‌determined to move forward with an operation he had urged for decades, argued that there might never be a better chance to assassinate Khamenei

By the time the call took place, Trump already had approved the idea of the United States carrying out a military operation against Iran but had not yet decided when or under what circumstances the United States would get involved, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.

The US military had for weeks built up a presence in the region, prompting many within the administration to conclude it was just a matter of when the president would decide to move forward. One possible date, just a few days earlier, had been scuttled because of bad weather.

Reuters was unable to determine how Netanyahu’s argument affected Trump as he contemplated issuing orders to strike, but the call amounted to the Israeli leader’s closing argument to his US counterpart.

The three sources briefed on the call said they believed it — along with the intelligence showing a closing window to assassinate Iran’s leader — was a catalyst for Trump’s final decision to order the military on February 27 to move ahead with Operation Epic Fury.

The first bombs struck on Saturday morning, February 28. Trump announced that evening that Khamenei was dead.

In response to a request for comment, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly did not directly address the call between Trump and Netanyahu but told Reuters the military operation was designed to “destroy the Iranian regime’s ballistic missile and production capacity, annihilate the Iranian regime’s Navy, end their ability to arm proxies, and guarantee that Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon.”

Neither Netanyahu’s office nor Iran’s UN representative responded to comment requests.

Netanyahu in a news conference on Thursday dismissed as “fake news” claims that “Israel somehow dragged the US into a conflict with Iran. Does anyone really think that someone can tell President Trump what to do? Come on.”

Trump has said publicly that the decision to strike was his alone.

Reuters reporting, with officials and others close to both leaders speaking mostly on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of internal deliberations, does not suggest that Netanyahu forced Trump to go to war.

But the reporting shows that the Israeli leader was an effective advocate and that his framing of the decision — including the opportunity to assassinate an Iranian leader — was persuasive to the president.

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth in early March suggested that revenge was at least one motive for the operation, telling reporters, “Iran tried to kill President Trump, and President Trump got the last laugh.”

June attack targeted nuclear sites

Trump ran his campaign in 2024 based on his first administration’s foreign policy of “America First” and said publicly that he wanted to avoid war with Iran, preferring to deal with Tehran diplomatically.

But as discussions over Iran’s nuclear programme failed to produce a deal last spring, Trump began contemplating a strike, according to the three people familiar with White House deliberations.

A first attack came in June, when Israel bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities and missile sites, and killed several Iranian leaders. US forces later joined the attack, and when that joint operation ended after 12 days, Trump publicly reveled in the success, saying the US had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Yet months later, talks began again between the US and Israel about a second aerial attack aimed at hitting additional missile facilities and preventing Iran from gaining the ability to build a nuclear weapon.

The Israelis began to plan their attack on Iran under the assumption they would be acting alone, Defence Minister Israel Katz told Israel’s N12 News on March 5.

But during a December visit to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Netanyahu told Trump that he was not fully satisfied with the outcome of the joint operation in June, said two people familiar with the relationship between the two leaders, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Trump indicated he was open to another bombing campaign, the people added, but he also wanted to try another round of diplomatic talks.

Two events pushed Trump toward attacking Iran again, according to several US and Israeli officials and diplomats.

The US operation on January 3 to capture Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas — which resulted in no American deaths while removing from power a longstanding US foe — demonstrated the possibility that ambitious military operations could have few collateral consequences for US forces.

Later that same month, massive anti-government protests erupted in Iran. Trump vowed to help the protesters but did little immediately that was public.

Privately, however, cooperation intensified between the Israel Defence Forces and the US military’s Middle East command, known as Centcom, with joint military planning conducted during secret meetings, according to two Israeli ⁠officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Not long after, during a February visit by Netanyahu to Washington, the Israeli leader briefed Trump on Iran’s growing ballistic missile programme, pointing out specific sites of concern.

He also laid out the dangers of the ballistic missile programme, including the risk that Iran might eventually gain the ability to strike the American homeland, said three people familiar with the private conversations.

The White House did not respond to questions about Trump’s December and February meetings with Netanyahu.

Trump’s chances at history

By late February, many US officials and regional diplomats considered a US attack on Iran very likely to proceed, though the details remained uncertain, according to two other US officials, one Israeli official and two additional officials familiar with the matter.

Trump was briefed by Pentagon and intelligence officials on the potential advantages to be gained from a successful attack, including the decimation of Iran’s missile program, according to two people familiar with those briefings.

Before the phone ⁠call between Netanyahu and Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a small group of top Congressional leaders on February 24 that Israel was likely to attack Iran, whether or not the US participated, and Iran would then likely retaliate against US targets, according to three people briefed on the meeting.

Behind Rubio’s warning was an assessment by American intelligence officials that such an attack would indeed provoke counterstrikes from Iran against US diplomatic and military outposts and US Gulf allies, said three sources familiar with US intelligence reports.

This prediction proved accurate. The strikes have led to Iranian counterattacks on US military assets, the deaths of more than 2,300 Iranian civilians and at least 13 US service members, attacks on US Gulf allies, the closure of one of the world’s most vital shipping routes, and a historic spike in oil prices that is already being felt by ⁠consumers in the United States and beyond.

Trump had also been briefed that there was a chance, even if small, that the assassination of Iran’s top leaders could usher in a government in Tehran that was more willing to negotiate with Washington, said two other people familiar with Rubio’s briefing.

The possibility of regime change was one of Netanyahu’s arguments in the call shortly before Trump gave final orders to attack Iran, said the people briefed on it.

That view was not held by the Central Intelligence Agency, which had assessed in the weeks prior that Khamenei would likely be replaced by an internal hardliner if he was killed, as Reuters previously reported.

The CIA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump repeatedly called for an uprising after Khamenei was assassinated. With the war in its fourth week and the region engulfed in conflict, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards still patrol the nation’s streets. Millions of Iranians remain sheltered in their homes.

Khamenei’s son Mojtaba, considered even more harshly anti-American than his father, has been named the new supreme leader of Iran.