End of an Era?: Iran Awaits Fallout from Zarif's Resignation

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif announced his resignation on the same day that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad arrived in Tehran, a visit Ayatollah Khamenei supporters hailed as proof that the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy had been victorious.

President Rouhani initially declined to respond to the announcement, but, on the evening of Tuesday, February 26, the BBC reported   announced that he had rejected Zarif's resignation. Prior to this, the majority of Iran’s parliamentarians urged him to do so, and several diplomats threatened to hand in their notices too. Zarif urged the diplomats to carry on their work: "I am calling all of my brothers and sisters in the Foreign Ministry and our representative offices to continue their duties," he told them in a memo. "Hopefully my resignation will serve as a spark to bring the Foreign Ministry back to its mandated position in foreign relations."

So could Zarif's offer of resignation be one of the most significant by a cabinet member since 1979? What does it say about the future of Iran's dealings on the world stage, and its impact in the region? 

As one website reported, “After the photographs of today’s meeting, Zarif said that he no longer has any credit in the world as foreign minister” [Persian link]. Zarif had objected to the photographs of General Ghasem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s expeditionary Quds Force, meeting with Ayatollah Khamenei, President Rouhani and Bashar al-Assad — and without him. Contrary to the usual protocol, General Soleimani was sitting next to Bashar al-Assad. A few hours after Zarif’s resignation, news emerged that that he and the Rouhani administration had not been informed that the Syrian president was coming to Tehran. This suggests that the situation could have been worse: President Rouhani himself might have been excluded from the meeting, which took place during al-Assad’s first visit to the country since the start of the Syrian Civil War in 2011.

Officials close to Ayatollah Khamenei have repeatedly shown their opposition and disdain for Zarif. On one occasion, Zarif clashed with General Soleimani after he removed Hossein Amir-Abdollahian as his deputy in Arab affairs.

But the tensions were obviously more about the nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), than the Islamic Republic’s regional policies. Grasping a new opportunity to attack Zarif, some of the Supreme Leader’s closest allies have talked about putting him on trial because of the JCPOA and the United States’ exit from the deal, which President Trump announced in May 2018. Zarif’s critics claimed that the nuclear agreement had not only not been beneficial to Iran but had actually harmed the interests of the country.

 

 

Mohammad Javad Zarif and John Kerry during nuclear negotiations

End of Zarif?

Before Rouhani announced that he would not be accepting Zarif's decision, Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reporter Katayoon Lamezadeh claimed that he had, leading to denials from Mahmoud Vaezi, President Rouhani’s Chief-of-Staff. Lamezadeh tweeted: “When I asked an informed source whether the president had accepted his resignation, he said ‘End of Zarif.’”

But whether or not Rouhani has officially accepted it, this could likely be the end for Zarif. Not only did he resign, but news of his resignation overshadowed the news of Bashar al-Assad’s visit to Tehran, which, without the complications of Zarif's resignation announcement on Istagram, could have commanded even more impact, just the kind of celebratory impact the regime craves. His announcement detracted from the narrative of Iran’s victorious regional foreign policy in Syria, and will be met with further vitriol and anger from Ayatollah’s Khamenei’s allies.

 

Zarif meets French President François Hollande, 2015

 

Outside of Khamenei’s circle, some had said that Zarif could be a candidate for the next presidential election, despite the fact that Zarif had repeatedly insisted that he was not very knowledgeable about domestic policies. But of course now, there will be very little chance that the Supreme Leader’s allies would abide by his candidacy.

 

Confessions of a “Spy”

Over the last few months, Zarif’s nuclear negotiating team has practically disintegrated. Abdolrasoul Dorri-Esfahani was arrested for spying and in September 2018, when Zarif answered questions in parliament, Javad Karimi Ghoddousi, member of the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, showed a video of Dorri-Esfahani’s confessions. The film, which Ghoddousi said was produced by the Revolutionary Guards’ Intelligence Unit [Persian video], was clearly designed to discredit not only Dorri-Esfahani but the whole negotiating team and the JCPOA itself.

 

The Iranian Team at the UN Security Council in 1987 during discussions over Resolution 598, which ended the Iran-Iraq war. From Left: Hassan Rouhani, Sirus Nasseri, Ali Akbar Velayati and Mohammad Javad Zarif

 

As for the other members of the team, Hamid Baeidinejad was appointed Iranian ambassador to the United Kingdom and Majid Takht-Ravanchi is now the political deputy at President Rouhani’s office. The remaining members have taken up various roles and are not in prominent positions.

In terms of other measures that were due to be adopted (and which have a bearing on Iran’s global reputation when it comes to doing business), the Expediency Council has not approved the Palermo Protocols that supplement the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime [PDF] or the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism. And although European leaders have expressed a desire to keep the JCPOA intact, its future is not by any means secure.

Continued talk about Iran abandoning the JCPOA coupled with Zarif’s resignation have kindled fears that Iran is moving toward armed conflicts with its adversaries. His resignation could mean an end to diplomacy and more power for the Revolutionary Guards.

For many Iranians, Zarif’s resignation symbolizes the failure of negotiations, a lost hope in Europe and the danger of a direct conflict with Saudi Arabia in Yemen, with Israel in Syria and even US military forces in various parts of the Middle East.

 

Zarif Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, February 2019

Defender of Human Rights Violations

For opponents of the Islamic Republic, however, the resignation does not make much difference. Zarif was scheduled to deliver a speech on human rights in Iran to the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee, which deals with social, humanitarian and cultural issues. Before his resignation Zarif had called himself “a professor of human rights” and had claimed that he had been teaching human rights for more than 30 years. Coinciding with this claim, he also more vigorously than ever justified the Islamic Republic’s violations of human rights.

In justifying this dismal record, he said: “We ourselves chose to live in a different way.” And, more recently, he added: “We are proud to be under pressure for supporting Palestine,” referring, indirectly, to the Islamic Republic’s proclaimed goal of destroying Israel.

Mohammad Javad Zarif was a fierce critic of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s foreign policy, and for this reason, he was kept outside the government during the Ahmadinejad era. But the irony is that now his fate resembles that of Manouchehr Mottaki, Ahmadinejad’s foreign minister. Mottaki was dismissed from his post while he was on a foreign visit and his dismissal overshadowed other news, not so different from Zarif’s resignation taking center stage during a visit from one of Iran’s most important regional allies.

 

Zarif at the UN, 2018

Zarif’s resignation also comes at a time when the US State Department is mobilizing its resources against the Islamic Republic. Zarif’s Foreign Ministry had been doing its best to dismiss the significance a two-day conference on the Middle East that was hosted by the United States in Warsaw, Poland, earlier in February. Because of this, some who support  Trump’s administration and its increased pressure on Iran could claim Zarif’s resignation as a political victory for their cause.

In recent months, Israel has repeatedly attacked Iranian military positions in Syria, prompting Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah and a staunch ally of the Islamic Republic, to warn Israel about the possibility of a war.

Altogether, Zarif’s resignation could prove to be the most consequential resignation of a cabinet minister since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Zarif was the first Iranian foreign minister to meet his US counterpart after the two countries broke relations nearly 40 years ago. And now he is the first foreign minister of the Islamic Republic to resign. The reverberations from this announcement are bound to be significant.