Iran’s parliament approves chief negotiator of 2015 nuclear deal as new FM
Hardline lawmakers back all of President Masoud Pezeshkian’s cabinet picks, indicating they’re acceptable to all power centers in the Islamic Republic

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s hardline parliament approved on Wednesday all members of reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian’s cabinet, including a chief negotiator of the 2015 nuclear deal, who was installed as foreign minister.
The approval marks an early win for Pezeshkian, a longtime lawmaker who found himself catapulted into the presidency after a helicopter crash in May killed his hardline predecessor.
Getting his officials approved shows Pezeshkian picked a cabinet of consensus with names palatable to all of the power centers within Iran’s theocracy instead of going for controversial choices.
Underlining that point, Pezeshkian immediately posted an image online with him standing next to Iran’s judiciary chief, a Shiite cleric, and the country’s parliament speaker, a hard-liner he once faced in the election.
“Consensus for Iran,” he wrote in the caption.
Former foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who campaigned for Pezeshkian in his election, later resigned as a vice president for the new leader over the cabinet selections.

Among those in Pezeshkian’s new cabinet is Abbas Araghchi, 61, a career diplomat who will be Iran’s new foreign minister.
Araghchi was a member of the Iranian negotiating team that reached a nuclear deal with world powers in 2015 that capped Tehran’s nuclear program in return for the lifting of sanctions.
In 2018, then-US president Donald Trump pulled the US out of the deal and imposed more sanctions on Iran. Pezeshkian said during his presidential campaign that he would try to revive the nuclear deal.
Araghchi, known for openness toward the West, has recently vowed “all-around support for the axis of resistance and Palestine” during a speech in parliament, referencing pro-Tehran proxies opposed to Israel, including the terrorist groups Hamas and the Houthis.
The candidate who received the most support from lawmakers was the country’s new defense minister, Aziz Nasirzadeh, who received 281 votes out of 288 present lawmakers. The chamber has 290 seats.
Nasirzadeh was chief of the Iranian air force from 2018 to 2021.
Health Minister Mohammad Reza Zafarghandi received the lowest number of votes with 163.
The only female proposed, Housing and Road Minister Farzaneh Sadegh, a 47-year-old architect, received 231 votes. She is the first female minister in Iran in more than a decade.

The parliament also approved Pezeshkian’s proposed Intelligence Minister Ismail Khatib, as well as Justice Minister Amin Hossein Rahimi, both of whom served under the late president Ebrahim Raisi. Pezeshkian also put Raisi’s minister of industries, Abbas Aliabadi, in the post of energy minister.
In a speech in parliament ahead of the vote, Pezeshkian said he initially “had ideal [candidates] on my mind.”
“But when I saw that there was no mutual agreement on them, I backed down… because agreement was more important to me than ideal [candidates],” he said, vowing “to move forward with unity.”
Dropping proposed ministers has been a tradition in Iran’s parliament, making Pezeshkian’s success that much more striking. Former reformist president Mohammad Khatami was the only president who received a vote of confidence for all of his proposed ministers in both 1997 and 2001.
The Times of Israel Staff contributed to this report.