Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, the urbane, US-educated architect of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, announced his resignation unexpectedly on Monday on Instagram.
“Many thanks for the generosity of the dear and brave people of Iran and its authorities over the past 67 months. I sincerely apologise for the inability to continue serving and for all the shortcomings during my service. Be happy and worthy”, he wrote on his Instagram page jzarif_ir.
He gave no specific reasons for his decision. Unconfirmed media reports indicated he resigned over Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s visit to Tehran on Monday. Noting that Zarif was not pictured in any of the coverage of the visit, one online website said: “the foreign minister was not informed”.
Zarif played the lead role in striking the deal under which Iran agreed to curbs on its nuclear programme in return for the lifting of international financial sanctions.
He came under attack from anti-Western hardliners in Iran after the United States pulled out of the agreement last May and reimposed sanctions on Iran’s economy and its lifeblood oil industry that were lifted under the deal.
Assad made his first public visit to Iran since the start of Syria’s war in 2011 on Monday, meeting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in a post on Twitter, dismissed Zarif and Rouhani as “front men for a corrupt religious mafia.”
“Our policy is unchanged – the regime must behave like a normal country and respect its people”, Pompeo said.
A foreign ministry spokesman and spokesman for the Iranian mission to the United Nations, Alireza Miryousefi, confirmed the announcement of the resignation. There was no immediate word, however, on whether Rouhani would accept it.
Several lawmakers and politicians took to social media calling on the pragmatist Rouhani to reject the resignation, saying it would not serve national interests and would empower hardliners in Iran’s faction-ridden clerical establishment.