The Fate of Iranian Foreign Ministers

Over the last 40 years, the Iranian foreign ministry has been a failure — unable to make decisions, carry out its legal duties, or exercise its legal authority — and it has never been able to prevent destructive interference by other government institutions.

Of the nine Iranian foreign ministers since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, one (Karim Sanjabi) was forced to escape Iran, one (Sadegh Ghotbzadeh) was executed, one (Ebrahim Yazdi) was disliked  and hounded by the regime until the day he died, one (Mir Hossein Mousavi) lives under house arrest, one (Kamal Kharrazi) has been reluctantly kept in the field of foreign affairs by the Supreme Leader, one (Manouchehr Mottaki) was dismissed while he was on an official foreign visit, one (Ali Akbar Salehi) is repeatedly targeted by hardliners who want to take revenge on him, and the last one (Mohammad Javad Zarif) faces an uncertain future.

The only foreign minister who enjoyed reasonable success is Ali Akbar Velayati. Velayati was foreign minister for 16 years, half of it during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, the founder of the Islamic Republic and its undisputed ruler, always supported him, as did Ayatollah Ali Khamenei when he succeeded Khomeini. In fact, Khamenei wanted to make him his prime minister, but he did not secure enough votes from the parliament for this to happen. But, out of all the post-revolutionary foreign ministers, he has been the only one to be allowed to function as a foreign minister in the real sense of the title. 

 

Karim Sanjabi: Forced to Escape Iran

Karim Sanjabi, the first post-revolutionary foreign minister, was a well-known figure of the National Front who, together with Shapour Bakhtiar and Dariush Forouhar, two other nationalist figures, used to write letters to the Shah on the necessity of reform. Bakhtiar became the last minister for Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi and was stabbed to death by three terrorists in Paris in 1991 after the revolution. Forouhar and his wife were assassinated in Tehran in 1998 as part of what became known as the “Chain Murders.”

Karim Sanjabi was against the 1979 occupation of the US embassy in Tehran and the hostage-taking of US diplomats — actions that Ayatollah Khomeini praised and supported. But very soon it became clear that Iran had to pay a steep price for these actions. Various US trade and economic sanctions, which are still in place, were among the consequences.

Karim Sanjabi was not able stay with the interim government of Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan as foreign minister, and his tenure lasted less than two months. 

“Considering that the affairs of the country are not run in a desirable manner and free from the interference of irresponsible elements,” he told a press conference after announcing his resignation, “I had to resign as a warning for possible dangers ahead. I found it inadvisable to remain only as an administrator...without succeeding in making any changes to the system in place.”

On March 30 and 31, 1979, a referendum was held on the Iranian system of government and the creation of the Islamic Republic. Karim Sanjabi boycotted it in the name of the National Front. In response, Ayatollah Khomeini declared that the National Front was “apostate.” Sanjabi was forced to go into hiding and a little later secretly left Iran.

 

Ebrahim Yazdi: Out of Favor until he Died

Sanjabi’s successor, Ebrahim Yazdi, the second and the last foreign minister of the post-revolutionary interim government, did not fare any better. He was not forced to escape from Iran but his later life was spent in dealing with the courts, prison and in political isolation.

One of the reasons for Sanjabi’s resignation was the role Shahriar Rouhani, Ebrahim Yazdi’s son-in-law, played in the occupation of the Iranian embassy in Washington, D.C. On orders from Ayatollah Khomeini, pro-revolution activists occupied the embassy in the last weeks of the Pahlavi monarchy, and when Ardeshir Zahedi was Iran’s ambassador to the United States [Persian link].

Yazdi’s tenure at the foreign ministry did not even last seven months. Mehdi Bazargan’s interim government resigned in protest against a range of issues, chiefly the occupation of the US embassy and its consequences. All members of the government resigned and, in retaliation for the embassy’s occupation, all Iranian diplomats were expelled from the US.

 

Sadegh Ghotbzadeh: Executed by Firing Squad

After the resignation of the interim government, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, at the time a trusted aid of Khomeini, was appointed as foreign minister on November 29, 1979. He tried hard to release the American hostages but the decision was out of his hands and his tenure was not a success either.

He also tried to extradite Mohammad Reza Shah to Iran but, again, he failed. During his tenure, relations between Iran and the United States broke down and they remain broken to this day.

On April 8, 1982, Ghotbzadeh and a group of army officers and clergymen were arrested and charged with planning a coup d’état to assassinate Ayatollah Khomeini and overthrow the Islamic Republic. On September 15, 1982, Ghotbzadeh was executed at Evin Prison by a firing squad.

 

Mir Hossein Mousavi: Under House Arrest

Sadegh Ghotbzadeh was the last foreign minister chosen by the Revolutionary Council. Following his time in the post, from August 1980 until August 1981, the Iranian foreign ministry did not officially appoint a minister, so the ministry was supervised by an acting minister. Mir Hossein Mousavi was then appointed.

At the time the situation in Iran was so chaotic that during his 82-day tenure, which ended on December 15, 1981, Mousavi served three prime ministers — Mohammad Ali Rajaei, Mohammad Javad Bahonar and Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani. In his first week in office, Mousavi announced that the newly-founded Islamic Republic would “continue its anti-Zionist policy until the liberation of Quds [Jerusalem] and will transfer its diplomatic center of gravity from Europe and America to Asia and Africa.”

The foreign ministry under Mir Hossein Mousavi, one of the shortest in the history of the Islamic Republic during one its most unstable junctures, was very much under the influence of Khomeini’s anti-Israeli and anti-American discourse. As a result, Mousavi was unable to take any meaningful action except to help manage the war with Iraq along with other officials. Mousavi’s performance impressed Ayatollah Khomeini enough that he was appointed prime minister after his short tenure as foreign minister.

As prime minister, Mousavi never had good relations with Ayatollah Khamenei, who was president at time. The long-lasting consequences of this were quite clear in the aftermath of the disputed 2009 presidential election, when Mousavi, the reformist candidate, and his wife Zahra Rahnavard were placed under house arrest, where they remain until this day.

The media affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards had a range of criticisms directed at Mousavi during his time as foreign minister. Among them was a response to what Mousavi said about supporting the Palestinians: “First, we must be strong ourselves before we can save others.” He made similar statements during his presidential campaign, and this is one reason why he has remained under house arrest, without trial, for so many years.

 

Ali Akbar Velayati: The Exception

Ali Akbar Velayati’s tenure as foreign minister is an exception in the 40-year history of the Islamic Republic. He was appointed foreign minister on December 15, 1981 and served until August 20, 1997.

On December 18, 1989, Nicolae Ceausescu, the Romanian dictator, paid an official visit to Iran at the invitation of President Hashemi Rafsanjani and at the suggestion of Velayati. But shortly after his return to Romania he was overthrown in an uprising and was executed on December 25, 1989.

Such bad timing almost led to the impeachment of Velayati, but with the strong support of Ayatollah Khamenei, who had succeeded Khomeini as the Supreme Leader, he continued as the foreign minister. Since leaving office in 1997, he has been Khamenei’s Senior Advisor for Foreign Affairs. From this position, Velayati has been active in setting foreign policy — and interfering in the affairs of the country’s foreign policy.

 

Kamal Kharrazi: Reluctantly Tolerated

For eight years, from August 1997 to August 2005, Kamal Kharrazi served as foreign minister in the administration of the reformist president Mohammad Khatami. He was the most passive Iranian foreign minister to hold the post after the revolution, but even he often criticized the fact that other institutions of the regime interfered in the foreign policy of Iran. He said that the foreign ministry merely carried out the decisions others made on foreign policy but did not have much say in setting them.

At the time, the Revolutionary Guards and its expeditionary Quds Force interfered in foreign policy less conspicuously as it does today, but with the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, this interference grew stronger.

Toward the end of his tenure, Kharrazi put the “nuclear case” — the most important responsibility of the foreign ministry after the Iran-Iraq war — to the Supreme National Security Council because he felt that he could not do his job under pressure and with interference from other institutions. “Perhaps the foreign ministry...was not able to do this well,” wrote Hassan Rouhani, then the secretary general of the council, in his memoirs, “because some agencies did not pay enough attention to the decisions by this ministry...Sometimes, to protect itself from the consequences of its decision regarding the country’s economic and security issues, the foreign ministry looked for partners so that it would not be held solely accountable.”

 

Manouchehr Mottaki: Dismissed while on a Foreign Mission

Manouchehr Mottaki lasted for more than five years, from 2005 to 2010, as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s foreign minister. But he was then dismissed from his post while on an official visit to the African nation of Senegal. He was informed of his dismissal by the president of Senegal during a meeting. Senegal took this act as an insult and recalled its ambassador from Tehran.

Later, Mottaki said that Ahmadinejad was unhappy that he had been sending reports of his foreign visits to the office of Ayatollah Khamenei. When questioned by the parliament, Ahmadinejad denied that he had sent Mottaki on a diplomatic mission to Senegal but did not say who had.

 

Ali Akbar Salehi: In the Crosshairs of the Hardliners

Ali Akbar Salehi was President Ahmadinejad’s choice to succeed Mottaki. According to Salehi’s memoirs [Persian link], after Ayatollah Khamenei agreed to secret negotiations with the US over Iran’s nuclear program, Ahmadinejad told him that doing this would be dangerous for Salehi because other government institutions would eventually stand in his way.  

In his memoirs, Salehi writes that when he was in Saudi Arabia to meet on the Syrian crisis and attacks on embassies in Damascus, the British foreign secretary called to tell him that British diplomatic compounds in Iran had been attacked by demonstrators and that the fate of some of the embassy’s employees was unknown. He writes that after he told Ayatollah Khamenei’s office about this, one of its staff members contacted protesters to pass on a message from the Supreme Leader, telling them to end their occupation of the British embassy.

Salehi blames the police for failing to prevent this incident but, in any case, Britain broke diplomatic relations with Iran over the occupation of its embassy. Salehi’s foreign ministry had been undermined by the hardliners.

 

Mohammad Javad Zarif: Facing an Uncertain Future

Mohammad Javad Zarif had a similar experience, as protesters who claimed to be supporters of Ayatollah Khamenei attacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad in January 2016. This time it was Saudi Arabia that broke diplomatic relations with Iran and the prestige and the authority of the foreign ministry was again undermined.

When Zarif removed Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who had held the post of Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs since the time of Ahmadinejad and was known for his close relations with the Revolutionary Guards, he came under fierce attack from Iran’s conservative principlists. Zarif had been trying to take the initiative in setting Iran’s regional policies in the Middle East away from the Guards’ Quds Force and bringing them back to the foreign ministry and President Rouhani’s administration. But, of course, the attempt was not successful.

The last act of humiliation for Zarif, which many said led to his resignation, was that he was not informed of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s visit to Tehran, and he was not invited to the meeting between Khamenei, Assad, Rouhani and General Soleimani. His absence was a clear demonstration of the fact that the Iranian foreign ministry plays no role in the foreign policy of Iran in the Middle East.

This reality is supported by an anecdote published in The Life and Times of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani by the historian Jafar Shir Ali-Nia. Near the end of his life, the former president was asked his opinion of what the consequences would be if the Revolutionary Guards and, as a result, the Quds Force, were to be integrated with the regular armed forces of Iran. “If we did not have this force,” Rafsanjani replied, “the foreign ministry could function more effectively. We now have a real problem and the problem is that the foreign ministry is denied the opportunity to carry out its responsibilities in the most sensitive region that concerns us. We really have a problem in Iraq, in Syria, in Afghanistan, in Yemen and in every other place in the region. Nobody can be sent as an ambassador to any of these countries without the approval of the Quds Force.”

After the post-revolutionary turmoil in the early years of the Islamic Republic, after the war with Iraq and the instability of the 1980s, and after Revolutionary Guards began to interfere in the affairs of the foreign ministry in the 2000s, the current level of interference has reached a new climax — so much so that it was General Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force, who met with President Assad, and not Zarif.

Over the 40 years of the Islamic Republic, the role of the foreign ministry in Iran’s foreign policy has diminished and become more superficial at every step of the way. As Zarif said after his resignation, the role of the foreign minister has turned into a “decorative object.”