A former Iranian foreign minister who was key to the country’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers reportedly tendered his resignation yesterday from the government of reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, caving in to pressure from hard-liners.
The resignation of Mohammad Javad Zarif as vice president signaled Tehran’s rapid retreat from its outreach to the West as US President Donald Trump intensifies sanctions on the country.
Zarif has long been a target of hard-liners within the country’s theocracy. He had tried to resign once before and it remained unclear whether Pezeshkian had accepted it.
Photo: AP
The development comes after Iran’s parliament on Sunday impeached Minister of Finance Abdolnasser Hemmati, who once ran for the presidency signaling he would be willing to talk to the US president directly.
While lawmakers focused on their criticism of Hemmati over Iran’s plummeting currency, his removal also underscored the danger faced by Pezeshkian, who won election last year promising to reach out to the West to get sanctions lifted.
“Pezeshkian may have worse days ahead,” said Mohmmad Ebrahim Ansari Lari, a reformist and a political analyst.
The state-run IRNA news agency reported yesterday that Zarif handed in his resignation to Pezeshkian late the previous night, but it was unclear if the president accepted it. It was the second time Zarif has attempted to resign as Pezeshkian’s vice president for strategic affairs.
Writing on the social platform X, Zarif said he met on Sunday with the head of the country’s judiciary, Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei.
“Referring to the country’s conditions, he recommended that I return to university to prevent further pressure on the government,” Zarif wrote. “I immediately accepted.”
Zarif did not elaborate on what Mohseni-Ejei told him and there was no readout from the judiciary on the conversation. However, hard-liners had targeted Zarif since Pezeshkian’s election, citing a law that bars people from Iranian public office if they have children holding foreign passports. Zarif’s children are naturally born US citizens as he had lived in the US when serving as a local staffer with Iran’s mission to the UN in New York.
That had not previously stopped Zarif from rising within Iran’s foreign ministry.
Zarif has used resignation announcements in the past in his political career as leverage, including in a dispute last year over the composition of Pezeshkian’s Cabinet. The president had rejected that resignation.
In recent months, things have changed drastically for Iran following Trump’s return to the White House. While Iran’s 85-year-old supreme leader in August last year opened the door to negotiations with the West, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei slammed it shut again last month.
Trump, while suggesting he was willing to negotiate with Tehran, has also embarked on a renewed “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions.
Pezeshkian on Sunday seemingly followed suit with Khamenei’s new edict.
“My belief was that talks are better, but the supreme leader has said we do not negotiate with the US and we will go forward in the direction of the statements of our top leader,” Pezeshkian said.
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