Washington DC [US], March 4: As Iran makes no attempt to hide its loathing towards the West, operatives of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence reached out indirectly to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with an offer to discuss terms for ending the conflict, according to officials briefed on the outreach, The New York Times reported.
A crackling uncertainty envelops the air as it remains unknown if US President Donald Trump and Iran will consider the offer, as per The New York Times.
It is to be noted that the Iranian government remains in disarray as one by one its leaders are being killed by the Israeli strikes after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's death.
Israeli officials, who want a weekslong campaign to inflict maximum damage on Iran's military capabilities, and perhaps cause Iran's government to collapse, have urged the United States to ignore the approach. For now, the offer is not considered serious in Washington, as per New York Times.
Meanwhile, Head of Centre for Public Diplomacy and Spokesperson in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Islamic Republic of Iran, Esmaeil Baqaei, said that the recent strikes by the US and Israel damaged Golestan Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The clandestine offer came as US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that it was "too late" for Iran to restart negotiations.
Trump said that Iran's leadership, along with its air defence, Air Force, and Navy are "gone".
"Their air defense, Air Force, Navy, and Leadership is gone. They want to talk. I said 'Too Late'," the US President posted on Truth Social.
This comes as Abdul Majid Hakeem Ilahi, representative of the late Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, in an interview with ANI, said, "Iran is ready for negotiations but with dignity".
Meanwhile, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, in a Press Briefing on Wednesday, said that the US is winning the war decisively.
"Starting last night, and to be completed in a few days. The two most powerful air forces in the world will have complete control of Iranian skies. America is winning--decisively, devastatingly, and without mercy. They are toast, and they know it... and we have only just begun to hunt, dismantle, demoralise, destroy, and defeat their capabilities-- just four days in" on Operation Epic Fury.
On Tuesday, Israel struck a compound where senior Iranian clerics were meeting to choose a successor to their supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an airstrike on Saturday.
Ahead of the strikes on Iran, the CIA produced an intelligence assessment examining various scenarios of what sort of Iranian leadership might emerge after a US-Israeli attack on Iran. People briefed on the various scenarios produced by the agency note that none had a high degree of confidence -- there were simply too many unknown variables to predict how it would play out, as per The New York Times.
As a power vacuum looms over Tehran, Trump was asked about exiled Iranian Prince Reza Pahlavi. Trump was not very enthused.
Pahlavi "looks like a very nice person," he said, but indicated that he would prefer "somebody that's there that's currently popular, if there's such a person," Trump had said, as quoted by The New York Times.
Pahlavi is the eldest son of Iran's former shah, or king, who was overthrown in 1979 and has not lived in Iran since 1970.
Pahlavi on Wednesday called on Iranians living abroad to contact their elected representatives and decision-makers to press for sustained international support until what he described as the "collapse" of the Islamic Republic in Iran days after the death of the country's Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as the conflict in West Asia escalates.
In a video statement on X, Pahlavi, addressing the Iranian diaspora, urged the people living overseas to intensify their lobbying efforts in the coming weeks, calling the period ahead "sensitive" and "fateful" for Iran's future.
Meanwhile, Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the slain supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is the front-runner to succeed his father as the Islamic Republic's next head, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.
The report said that the senior clerics tasked with choosing the next supreme leader could announce their choice as early as Wednesday morning, as per The Times of Israel.
US and Israel's bombardment of Iran and Lebanon continues, with a strike on a hotel near Beirut and the building of the Assembly of Experts in Qom as the death toll surpasses 800 in both countries, as per Al Jazeera.
