Iran’s foreign minister Manuchehr Mottaki has been sacked by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and temporarily replaced by the head of the country’s atomic energy authority.
Iranian state media on Monday offered no explanation for the sudden move, but independent commentators and Western diplomats suggested that it meant a clear assertion of control over foreign policy by the hard-line president.
Officials in Tehran were said to have been taken aback by the announcement, which came days after the latest long-awaited but inconclusive talks with world powers over Iran’s nuclear program.
The temporary appointment of Ali Akbar Salehi, one of 12 vice-presidents who is seen as a “safe pair of hands,” is not expected to affect Iran’s approach.
Mottaki, a career diplomat, has had few successes since becoming foreign minister in 2005. In recent months Iran has experienced a series of diplomatic setbacks over human rights as well as the imposition of new UN and EU sanctions to force its compliance on the atomic issue.
Observers said it was a deliberate mark of disrespect that Mottaki was replaced while he was abroad, though Ahmadinejad did thank the outgoing minister for his services to “our Islamic nation.”
Disagreements between the two men became embarrassingly public recently after Ahmadinejad appointed several special envoys for the Middle East, Afghanistan and the Caspian region without consulting the foreign ministry. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, intervened to force him to back down.
“This is Ahmadinejad asserting his control over foreign policy,” said Baqer Moin, a London-based Iranian analyst. “It is a challenge to Khamenei too because he would have expected to have been consulted. It is bound to increase -tensions to a higher level. It is vintage Ahmadinejad — presenting others with a fait accompli.”
The move is also thought likely to please the president’s supporters in the increasingly powerful Revolutionary Guards Corps, Moin said.
The foreign ministry is not a big player in Iran and is often blamed when things go wrong. It has been performing badly recently, with key posts, including a new ambassador to London, left vacant.
“I have some sympathy for a foreign minister who has responsibility for painting Iran’s performance in a positive light,” said Richard Dalton, former British ambassador to Tehran. “I don’t think Mottaki is going to be a great loss to the international community.”
Sadegh Zibakalam, a political scientist at Tehran University, told al-Jazeera TV: “When he was appointed there were a lot of rumors that Mottaki had been imposed on Ahmadinejad. Since then, on half a dozen occasions, there had been rumors that Ahmedinejad had either sacked Mottaki or asked him to resign.”
Still, Mottaki never strayed from the official line. Last week he twice publicly snubbed US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a conference in Bahrain, even though the two had met earlier when relations between Tehran and Washington were undergoing a brief thaw.
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