Iran’s Zarif resigns from post as vice president for strategy, days after appointment
Former foreign minister and key negotiator of Iran’s 2015 nuclear pact with world powers quits, citing disappointment with new president Pezeshkian’s cabinet
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s former foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who negotiated a landmark 2015 nuclear deal with major world powers, on Monday announced he had resigned from his new post as a vice president.
“I resigned from the position of vice-president for strategic affairs last week,” Zarif said on X, less than two weeks after the newly-elected reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian chose him as his deputy.
Zarif cited several reasons for his resignation, most notably his disappointment with the line-up in the newly proposed 19-member cabinet.
“I am ashamed that I could not implement, in a decent way, the expert opinion of the committees [responsible for selecting candidates] and achieve the inclusion of women, youth and ethnic groups, as I had promised,” he said.
Pezeshkian on Sunday presented his cabinet, which included one woman, to parliament for approval.
The proposed list drew criticism from some among Iran’s reformist camp, including over the inclusion of conservatives from the government of late president Ebrahim Raisi.
“My message… is not a sign of regret or disappointment with dear Dr. Pezeshkian or opposition to realism; rather it means doubting my usefulness as a vice-president for strategic affairs,” he said, noting he would return to academia and focus less on Iran’s domestic politics.
Zarif, who was Iran’s top diplomat between 2013 and 2021 in the government of president Hassan Rouhani, became known on the international stage during the lengthy negotiations for the 2015 accord formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
The deal unraveled three years later when then-US president Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the deal and re-imposed crippling sanctions on the Islamic Republic, with Iran then breaching the deal too while enriching uranium to unprecedented levels.
But it made Zarif a figurehead for a potentially more open, outward-looking Iran that Pezeshkian pledged to strive for during his campaign, in which he was frequently joined by the former top diplomat.
