{"id":656344,"date":"2026-08-23T03:20:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T03:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/?p=656344"},"modified":"2026-08-23T03:20:00","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T03:20:00","slug":"escobar-how-trump-tried-to-bribe-the-head-of-the-irgc-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/?p=656344","title":{"rendered":"Escobar: How Trump Tried To Bribe The Head Of The IRGC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Escobar: How Trump Tried To Bribe The Head Of The IRGC<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Pepe Escobar,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Empire of Chaos, Lies, Plunder, Piracy. And bribes.<\/h2>\n

Mike Pompeo, former aspiring Tony Soprano, admitted: \u201cWe lie, we cheat, we steal.\u201d And we bribe.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A\u00a0Transition Protocol source, as we revealed live<\/a>, is unequivocal: The President of the United States \u2013 despite having \u201cwon\u201d the war on Iran countless times, at least in the Vociferation stakes \u2013 made a major attempt to induce IRGC Commander-in-Chief Gen.<\/strong> Ahmad Vahidi and senior Iranian military leadership to break with the government in Tehran through enormous financial inducements.<\/p>\n

So here we have POTUS playing good ol\u2019 Divide and Rule \u2013 which the Brits learned from the Roman Empire \u2013 to fracture the IRGC from the inside.<\/p>\n

This was not a mere exploratory diplomatic contact. Trump did not merely want to determine whether Vahidi supported U.S.-Iran negotiations.<\/p>\n

According to our source \u2013 placed in the tight inner circle of Leader Mojtaba Khamenei \u2013 this was a full leadership-buyout operation, modeled on the Venezuela playbook, to fracture the Iranian state.<\/p>\n

The attempt miserably failed.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Because Ahmad Vahidi completely rejected it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Trump administration had already created a somewhat direct conduit to Vahidi through Nechirvan Barzani, the President of the Kurdistan Region in Iraq, way back in May 2026. Then-DNI Tulsi Gabbard contacted Barzani \u2013 fully authorized by Trump and Vice-President JD Vance \u2013 and an encrypted connection to Vahidi was subsequently established through Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan.<\/p>\n

The channel stayed dormant \u2013 or in coma, for nearly 3 months. This time though Trump attempted to turn the channel into a de facto fracturing of the Iranian leadership, employing the conceptual precedent in Venezuela: isolate the central command; handsomely bribe those immediately around it for \u201ccooperation\u201d; and create the internal conditions for regime decapitation.<\/p>\n

The source describes \u201cbillions of dollars\u201d being waved as inducements to several members of the senior IRGC leadership through Vahidi. <\/strong>All that while Trump was on Hardcore Vociferation mode threatening Tehran and spinning his \u201ccontrol\u201d of the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n

Nothing so far has been independently confirmed in public. And probably will not. But that does not mean the source is not credible.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The source is part of Leader Mojtaba\u2019s tight inner circle; heard all about it directly from Vahidi; and later was fully authorized to disclose the extremely sensitive information to Pakistani mediators, especially Field Marshal Asim Munir, who Trump keeps calling virtually every day asking for \u201chelp\u201d getting the Iranians back at the negotiating table (when he in fact blew up the negotiating table).<\/p>\n

I bribe, therefore I am<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Vahidi is not a peripheral military figure.<\/strong> Far from it: he is the commander of the IRGC \u2013 the institutional center of gravity of Iranian hard power. The Trump administration wanted access to the top of the IRGC itself.<\/p>\n

But they bet on the wrong man. The number two man in Iran right now, overseeing everything including top IRGC decisions, is Mohsen Rezaee: the new secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) and personal representative of Leader Mojtaba Khamenei.<\/p>\n

Mohsen Rezaee is a former IRGC commander and his leadership is uncontested \u2013 as proven by the trust placed in him by the Leader. The overarching framework guiding his decisions \u2013 and people like Vahidi \u2013 is the Shi\u2019te sense of moral duty, ethics, self-sacrifice and the spirit of Sovereign Resistance, values completely alien to an Empire of Grifters.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no wonder that a crass neo-Crassus in War-a-Lago\/Washington actually believed that a battle-tested military leader \u2013 and those around him \u2013 could sell the fate of a civilization-state for a mere bribe, and induced to defect, stand aside or facilitate regime change.<\/p>\n

Applying the exact same Venezuela methodology means that the Trump administration actually believed they could translate it to a Shi\u2019ite Iran context. That proves once again an astonishing degree of cultural stupidity.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The methodology may work for corrupt Latin American political\/military elites: History tells us it happened so many times.<\/p>\n

But to believe that offering protection, political survival, loads of money and\/or a future share of the spoils to an IRGC that is far from being a loose political entourage around a vulnerable presidential palace fully demonstrates how the Empire of Grifters has no clue about the institutional cohesion of the Iranian security state.<\/p>\n

All across the Global South, this will be regarded for what it is: another episode of the neo-Crassus Art of the Deal.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Complementing another recent episode, where the capo fraternizes with the DPRK then asks South Korea \u2013 \u201cI asked for $10 billion\u201d \u2013 for protection money.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the\u00a0pizzo<\/em>. Not to be confused with pizza.\u00a0Pizzo\u00a0<\/em>is Sicilian slang for extortion money.<\/p>\n

Mafia, piracy, bribing, extortion: talk about a flexible Empire at work.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nSat, 08\/22\/2026 – 23:20<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Escobar: How Trump Tried To Bribe The Head Of The IRGC Authored by Pepe Escobar, Empire of Chaos, Lies, Plunder, Piracy. And bribes. Mike Pompeo, former aspiring Tony Soprano, admitted: \u201cWe lie, we cheat, we steal.\u201d And we bribe. A\u00a0Transition Protocol source, as we revealed live, is unequivocal: The President of the United States \u2013… Continue reading Escobar: How Trump Tried To Bribe The Head Of The IRGC<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":656339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,10,21,12,11,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-656344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cancel-culture","category-censorship","category-civil-liberties","category-election-integrity","category-equal-justice","category-free-speech","category-religious-freedom","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=656344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/656339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=656344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=656344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=656344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}