"Allegedly, Trump, acting like a mafia boss in international relations ... and thinking that Iran is the same as Venezuela, tried through backchannels in Iraqi Kurdistan to bribe the leader of the Revolutionary Guards of Iran (IRGC)!!"https://t.co/wGhqQerlvw pic.twitter.com/eNnblEYrVu
— the Lemniscat (@theLemniscat) August 22, 2026
An excerpt from, "Did Trump Try to Bribe the Iranian Generals With Billions?" By Nick Stamatakis, Helleniscope, August 20, 2026:
An extraordinary story has emerged from the secret diplomacy surrounding the U.S.-Iran confrontation: Allegedly, Trump, acting like a mafia boss in international relations as he is constantly behaving in his second term, and thinking that Iran is the same as Venezuela, tried through backchannels in Iraqi Kurdistan to bribe the leader of the Revolutionary Guards of Iran (IRGC)!!
What is substantially documented is that the Trump administration opened an unusual backchannel to senior figures in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, reportedly using Iraqi Kurdish President Nechirvan Barzani as an intermediary to reach IRGC commander General Ahmad Vahidi.
What allegedly happened inside that channel is far more explosive.
According to Larry Johnson and Pepe Escobar, their sources cited by the Transition Protocol YouTube program insist that Washington tried to persuade senior IRGC figures to distance themselves from, or potentially turn against, Iran’s political leadership. The alleged inducement reportedly involved enormous financial incentives.
. . .Their sources allegedly claim that senior IRGC figures were approached with financial incentives potentially worth billions of dollars in exchange for breaking with Iran’s leadership or facilitating a political realignment in Tehran. They describe the strategy as resembling a “Venezuela playbook” — trying to separate a government’s security elite from its political leadership.
Vahidi allegedly rejected the approach and allegedly informed Iran’s senior leadership. The same sources also claim that Pakistani Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir was approached as a possible intermediary and allegedly refused to participate in any effort to destabilize Tehran.
Those specific allegations have not been independently confirmed.
