A handout picture provided by the Iranian presidency on August 8, 2021, shows Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi chairing a cabinet meeting in the capital Tehran. (IRANIAN PRESIDENCY / AFP)
Iran’s new president picked a Foreign Ministry veteran with close ties to the military to replace Mohammad Javad Zarif as the nation’s top diplomat.
Hossein Amirabdollahian, a fluent Arabic speaker and previously deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs, was proposed for the role in a list of cabinet ministers presented to lawmakers on Wednesday by President Ebrahim Raisi.
Hossein Amirabdollahian, a fluent Arabic speaker and previously deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs, was proposed for the role in a list of cabinet ministers presented to lawmakers on Wednesday by President Ebrahim Raisi
Parliament will debate the choices for a week before voting to approve or reject the nominees. Raisi also nominated Javad Owji as oil minister.
If approved, the 57-year-old Amirabdollahian, an anti-Western conservative considered close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as well as Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant movement, will steer Iran’s negotiating team once talks resume in Vienna over how to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.
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If the sides can move forward, the fact that Amirabdollahian’s views are in line with those of the Guard and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could be advantageous, said Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group.
Amirabdollahian would be a “more difficult interlocutor for the West but a more capable one, as he will face much less internal resistance to his initiatives as his predecessor did,” he said.
Concerns that a return to the accord might not be possible have arisen as Raisi prepared to take power and twin attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf escalated tensions.
The Biden administration, which had hoped to secure an agreement in the period between Raisi’s June election victory and his inauguration early this month, is looking to gauge what path he wants to take as Iran’s enrichment work nears the point where it could deliver a bomb. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful, but distrust of its motives drove world powers to seek the 2015 nuclear pact.
Although still calling for a quick return to the agreement — abandoned by former President Donald Trump — as a pathway toward a “longer and stronger” deal, the US is willing to weigh alternatives, including the interim step of limited sanctions relief in exchange for Iran freezing its most provocative nuclear work, according to people familiar with the discussions.
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Oil markets are watching close for signs of when a new round of negotiations might begin as an agreement could unleash a surge in Iranian crude exports later in the year.
Amirabdollahian has been part of Iran’s nuclear negotiating teams in the past, both under President Mohammad Khatami and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.