Now that I have arrived in our summer quarters in the South of France, I am discovering the secret animal nature of Iran’s current leaders.
More than any other animal, they resemble the boar.
I know them well — both the Iranians and the boar.
This winter, my boar were particularly aggressive. They crashed through my electric fence like it was an Arleigh Burke destroyer in dry-dock, with devastating results.
I tell them every year not to do this, because they will get shot. And without fail, every year they do it.
They can’t help it. It is their boar nature. And neither I nor the local guns managed to catch them in the act and shoot them.
So they tore up acres of cultivated ground, ripping out flowers and shrubs, leaving behind hillsides looking like a swarm of mosquito boats had just swept past at 50mph.
This week, Maj. Gen. Mohsen Rezai (there is no “ret.” after that, despite the fact he was fired as Revolutionary Guards commander in 2007), announced that Iran had no intention of making a deal with the United States unless Donald Trump authorized the release of $24 billion in frozen Iranian assets.
I write about Rezai extensively in my new book, The Iran House: Tales of Revolution, Persecution, War, and Intrigue. One reason is that his son Ahmad defected to the United States in 1997 and not long thereafter called upon me to parole him into the country, where he learned English in our Kensington, Maryland basement for six months.
Rezai was sidelined for power for years because of his son’s actions. And when his son was murdered in Dubai in November 2011, I went there to investigate on behalf of his widow and young daughter. And what I found troubled me.
You can read the full story in the book. But in short, I believed Dad showed the regime he was capable of Abrahamic loyalty.
Mohsen Rezai reappeared in 2021 as a vice-president under the Raisi government. And now, he has reinvented himself once again, this time as the military advisor of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei.
It’s a convenient job, if true. Because Mojtaba is 1) shy, or 2) disabled, or 3) paranoid that the CIA will track him if he ever appears on a video, so he issues written statements that get read by a succubus.
Mohsen Rezai is that succubus.
His latest gambit — or invention, and we don’t really know which — is that El Supremo wants Trump to return $24 billion in frozen Iranian assets as a “sign of goodwill.” Otherwise, the negotiations are over.
Now that’s an interesting gambit. Eventually, if Iran gives up its enriched uranium — all of it, not just the HEU — and opens the Strait and pledges to never seek a nuclear weapons capability in the future, ever — well, then sanctions relief becomes possible.
But not upfront. Trump made that clear.
But someone talked the U.S. Navy into easing the blockade of the Strait to allow four Iranian-flagged supertankers to slip the noose this week, carrying seven million barrels of Iranian crude they loaded at Kharg more than six weeks ago.
I suspect Trump’s Svengali, Steve Witkoff. I can picture him whispering in the president’s ear: Mr. President, it’s such a small gesture, but for the Iranians, it will show our good faith and unblock the negotiations. That’s all they are asking. Just a little gesture or goodwill.
Here’s a lesson in Iranology for Mr. Witkoff. Offer the mullahs carrots and they will consume them, burp, and not even say thank-you. Instead, they will ask for more.
And that’s exactly what Mohsen Rezai is doing.
The president today made his deadline clear. He wants a deal over the weekend and a signing ceremony next week in Geneva. Mohsen Rezai and the Gayatollah can pound sand in their bunker as it collapses on top of them. Or so we can hope.
Read more Does Iran already have nuclear weapons?
