Live updates: Follow the latest news on US-Iran war
US President Donald Trump says Iran has entered peace talks and signalled it is open to a deal.
But who in Iran can he talk to?
Former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead. His successor, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, has not been seen or heard in public, his condition uncertain.
Several other commanders and politicians have been assassinated. Israel's killing of security chief Ali Larijani eliminated one person seen as a possible negotiator.
Iranian state media denied at first any negotiations are happening at all. But the Foreign Ministry later said that "messages from the US, sent via friendly countries to seek talks and end the war, were received and answered in line with Iran’s principles".
The war has exposed a fragmented chain of command in Iran, with military units acting under their own steam.
It has been left to a few surviving heavyweights to be the faces of Iran's regime in wartime, but all have cast doubts on the prospects of a deal.
Abbas Araghchi, Foreign Minister
Mr Araghchi is an experienced negotiator with the West who helped strike a nuclear deal in 2015, when Barack Obama was in the White House.
But he has enjoyed less success in the Trump era. Most recently, he led Iran's negotiating team in three rounds of talks with the US in February, which failed to avert war.
Earlier talks involving Mr Araghchi met a similar fate when Israel attacked Iran in the 12-day war last June.
The current war has made Mr Araghchi one of Iran's chief spokesmen. In that role, he has played down the prospect of future talks after what he called his "very bitter experience" in the past year. "I don't think talking with the Americans would be on our agenda any more," he said.
A former ambassador to Finland and Japan, who also fought in the 1980 to 1988 Iran-Iraq war, Mr Araghchi has been Iran's Foreign Minister since 2024.
Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, parliament Speaker
After Mr Trump said talks had been held with Iran, reports suggested parliament Speaker Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf was the man in contact with US officials.
But he denied that, saying "no negotiations have been held".
Mr Qalibaf is a former Iranian Air Force pilot who has openly mocked Mr Trump's war leadership. "He has claimed he 'defeated' us nine times in the last two weeks. Hilarious!," Mr Qalibaf wrote in one social media post.
Also a former police chief and Tehran mayor, Mr Qalibaf has been Speaker of the Iranian parliament since 2020, a position previously held by Ali Larijani. He has also run for the presidency several times.
Most recently, in 2024, he ran in a presidential election prompted by Ebrahim Raisi's death in a helicopter crash. Seen as a hardliner in the race, he came third behind Masoud Pezeshkian and runner-up Saeed Jalili.
Masoud Pezeshkian, President
President Masoud Pezeshkian struck one of the few conciliatory notes of the war when he offered a truce and apology to Gulf states under attack by Iran.
But the episode also exposed his lack of authority, as drone and missile attacks continued regardless under the command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Iran's President is relatively weak even in calmer times and has little sway over military and security matters. A former surgeon elected as a reformist in 2024, Mr Pezeshkian is widely seen as having been sidelined.
He did not respond directly to Monday's claims of peace talks, instead paying tribute to Iran's armed forces and "proud defenders of the homeland".
Last week he told the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that Iran would need "firm guarantees" against future aggression in any deal to end the war. He also called for an "Islamic security structure" in the Middle East as an alternative to US influence.
