Secretary of State Marco Rubio won’t say with whom President Donald Trump (R) or his representatives are speaking in the “new and more reasonable” regime about ending the war in Iran.

I’m not going to disclose to you who those people are because that would probably get them in trouble with some other groups of people inside of Iran. Look, there’s some fractures going on there internally, and at the end of the day I think that if there are people in Iran who now, given everything that’s happened, are willing to move in a different direction for their country that would be great.

That’s entirely valid on Rubio’s part, but it does raise a question in my pea brain. Are those new and more reasonable people really in such a tenuous position, or is the threat to them more easily contained by their own supporters?

If the former, then how would they enforce any deal they might reach with the US?

It seems to me, too, that those factions opposing these new and more reasonable people already know who those folks are and what they’re up to, and so the risk to them already is fully developed.

Thus: who really speaks for Iran, which is to say, the IRGC and the Basij?

On the other hand, Trump has identified the Iranian government official with whom his representatives have been negotiating: Iran’s parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. It remains to be seen for how long he survives the apparent Iranian factionalism, and if so, how well he might be able to enforce Iran’s side of any deal.