Iran’s new president picked a hawkish Foreign Ministry veteran with close ties to the military elite to replace Mohammad Javad Zarif as the nation’s top diplomat, underscoring the shift in power that’s clouding the resumption of nuclear talks with world powers.
Hossein Amirabdollahian, a fluent Arabic speaker and previously deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs, was proposed for the role in a list of cabinet ministers presented to lawmakers on Wednesday by President Ebrahim Raisi Parliament will debate the choices for a week before voting to approve or reject the nominees. Other candidates include Javad Owji as oil minister.
While Owji has no ministerial experience, he’s held senior positions at oil, gas and petrochemical industries, including a stint as head of the National Iranian Gas Co. He also served as managing director of two energy companies under the control of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Raisi’s mentor.
If approved, the 57-year-old Amirabdollahian, an anti-Western conservative considered close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as well as Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant movement, will steer Iran’s negotiating team once talks resume in Vienna over how to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. His oversight could see Iran seek to drive a harder bargain over rolling back its rapidly expanding nuclear program in return for sanctions relief and perhaps even topple the process.
But if the sides can move forward, the fact that Amirabdollahian’s views are in line with those of the Guard and Khamenei could be advantageous, said Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group.
Amirabdollahian would be a “more difficult interlocutor for the West but a more capable one, as he will face much less internal resistance to his initiatives as his predecessor did,” he said.
Concerns that a return to the accord might not be possible have arisen as Raisi prepared to take power and twin attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf escalated tensions.
The Biden administration, which had hoped to secure an agreement in the period between Raisi’s June election victory and his inauguration early this month, is looking to gauge what path he wants to take as Iran’s enrichment work nears the point where it could deliver a bomb. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful, but distrust of its motives drove world powers to seek the 2015 nuclear pact.