A former foreign minister, he was the public face of reformist-backed talks with world powers that resulted in Iran’s 2015 nuclear accord. Tehran, Iran – Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s president strategic foreign policy adviser and a leading advocate for negotiations with the West, has resigned once more amid intense resistance from hardline critics.
The country’s ex-foreign minister and emblem of reformist-backed talks with world powers that resulted in Iran’s 2015 nuclear accord announced the move in an internet statement before dawn on Monday, stating it follows “the most bitter period of my 40-year period of service.”.
Surprisingly, Zarif claimed that he was “advised” by judiciary head Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei to step down and return to teaching at a university “to avert additional pressure on the government” during a volatile time in the nation.
He was compelled by hardline groups to step down for months under a 2022 law banning dual-nationality nationals or those with first-degree dual-national family members from holding political office. His two children are natural-born United States citizens.
Moderate President Masoud Pezeshkian has not publicly responded to the news, although state media announced that his office received the resignation. Mohseni Ejei received senior judiciary officials on Monday but did not say anything about Zarif’s resignation. In a video of the meeting, published by state media, he only called on the judiciary to help the government manage the currency market.
Zarif’s resignation followed just hours after the impeachment of another high-profile member of the centrist faction, Abdolnaser Hemmati, as economy minister by hardline and conservative lawmakers who have controlled Iran’s parliament for the last five years through low-turnout elections.
They portrayed the ex-central bank governor and unsuccessful presidential hopeful as a “harmful” force on the Iranian economy and charged that he was deliberately trying to reduce the value of the national currency to draw in short-term liquidity to cover huge budget deficits.
Hemmati, who had rejected the allegations and claimed that he was fighting a multi-layered foreign exchange regime that has spawned corruption over many years, could not persuade MPs that firing him just six months into the new government would negatively impact the struggling Iranian economy.
As the Nowruz New Year festivities are in about two weeks, with the attendant increased shopping and market activity, inflation is around 35 per cent and the Iranian rial has been free-falling.
