Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif attends the 28th Session of the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva March 2, 2015.CREDIT: REUTERS/DENIS BALIBOUSE[/caption]
(Bloomberg) -- Mohammad Javad Zarif, Irans foreign minister and chief nuclear negotiator, presents a puzzle. To some, his flawless English and soft manner offer the picture of a pragmatist eager to bring his country back into the world community, trying to drag along a reluctant leadership at home. To others, his Western credentials are a mask and he is indistinguishable from hardliners he needs to keep satisfied.
Zarif is the most effective diplomat Iran has had since the 1979 revolution, said Karim Sadjapour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.That said, Zarif offers an unrealistic portrait of the Iranian government because if the men who controlled power in Tehran all thought like Zarif, there would have been a U.S.-Iran rapprochement decades ago.
Reuel Marc Gerecht, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former C.I.A. officer, sees it differently.
Hes an Islamic Revolutionary, he said. Revolutionaries come in a number of models and Zarif is the expatriate, mild-mannered model who rejects the values of the West.
Now Zarif is on the verge of a historic agreement that might open a new chapter in a relationship between Iran and the West, especially the U.S., after decades of mutual suspicion. The nuclear deal would remove sanctions that crippled Irans economy and open up Irans largely untapped market of middle-class consumers.
In some ways, Zarifs image mirrors that of his U.S. counterpart, John Kerry, who is also accused by conservatives at home of wanting an Iranian nuclear deal too much.
After he went for a 15-minute stroll with Kerry in Geneva in January, Zarif was assailed for betraying the revolution. Fending off accusations of softness, Zarif made much of reports that he had been heard yelling at Kerry. He told a university student group that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had asked him to smile more rather than shout.
Appear Pleasant
Zarif knows that you should smile and appear pleasant but he never forgets that you shouldnt trust the U.S., said Hossein Rassam, an Iranian analyst based in London who was an adviser to the U.K. foreign office. Hes aware the Islamic Republic and the U.S. can never have a friendly relationship unless one side transforms substantially.
There has been change. Since the election of President Hassan Rouhani in June 2013, talks between U.S. and Iranian diplomats have grown routine. Zarif and Kerry, who call each Javad and John, have met eight times this year to cut the deal that limits Irans nuclear program in return for lifting economic sanctions.
Zarif was appointed with one main mission, to remove the sanctions, said Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington D.C. Hes spent more time in Geneva than in Beirut, Baghdad, Kabul, Islamabad or even Moscow -- those countries are not his brief.
Interim Accord
In November 2013, Iran and the six powers, China, France, Germany Russia, the U.K., and the U.S., signed an interim agreement under which Iran limits some of its nuclear programs in return for about $7 billion in sanctions relief through lifting of restrictions on gold and precious metals trading, aircraft and automobile parts and allowing access to Irans frozen assets. After two extensions, the sides say they hope to sign a final deal by the end of the month, alarming opponents on both sides.
Zarif has had to navigate political shoals. He rebuked 47 Republican senators who sent a letter to the Iranian leadership warning that any agreement could be nullified with the stroke of a pen by the next president.
Zarif said the senators had no understanding of the nuances of the U.S. Constitution and were in danger of advocating a violation of international law.
Meanwhile, his troubles at home have been legion, especially after the walk with Kerry.
Treason
The head of Irans paramilitary Basij force, Mohammad Reza Naghdi, accused Zarif of amateurishness while Javad Naghavi Hosseini, the spokesman of parliaments National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, compared the stroll to treason.
Although he has no political power base, Zarif appears safe since he has the backing of the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, whom he has known for decades. He organized Khameneis trip to New York to address the UN General Assembly in 1987.
Khamenei likes Zarif and Zarif will do whatever Khamenei asks him, said Hooshang Amirahmadi, a professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, who has known Zarif for 25 years.
Born in 1960 into an affluent and religiously conservative family, Zarif grew up in a house with no television or newspapers, according to a 2013 biography, Mr. Ambassador: A conversation with Mohammad-Javad Zarif, Irans former Ambassador to the United Nations.
He portrays himself as having lived a sheltered life -- the family gardener escorted him to the school bus and he was not allowed to visit classmates at home. In January 1977, with the help of a family friend, he avoided the draft and left for a preparatory school in San Francisco, enrolling later at San Francisco State University.
Berkeley
He was involved with the Muslim Students Association at Berkeley but continued his studies after Islamic revolutionaries overthrew the shah. He returned to Iran in the summer of 1979 and married before heading back to the U.S.
Although his children, a daughter and a son, were born in the U.S, Zarif downplays the American influence on his life. I lived for 30 years in the US, but always kept my Islamic and Iranian culture and customs, he said in the book, adding that he almost never set foot in the house of a non-Muslim. Even now Western lifestyle feels strange to me.
After the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, which Zarif calls the Den of Espionage, he enrolled in the international relations program at Columbia University in New York. He was hired at Irans mission to the UN, writing letters and issuing visas. He even found time to perform marriage ceremonies, including Amirahmadis.
Western Hostages
Named a deputy foreign minister in 1992, Zarif was involved in delicate negotiations with the UN for the release of Western hostages in Lebanon, according to the memoir of the former envoy Giandomenico Picco.
After the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S., Zarif was among the Iranian diplomats urging greater engagement with the West and helped establish the new Afghan government after the fall of the Taliban, according to Congressional testimony of James Dobbins, U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
With the 2005 election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who espoused a more bellicose foreign policy, Zarif became isolated. Two years later, at 47, he was forced to retire. He taught at the foreign ministrys university.
He kept a low profile during the 2009 protests against the disputed reelection of Ahmadinejad. In 2013, with the sanctions wrecking the Iranian economy, Rouhani was elected and Zarif was brought in from the cold as foreign minister.
Zarif has not been consistent in his public posture on sensitive matters. In 2013, he sent new years greetings to Jews worldwide via Twitter. Yet as ambassador to the UN he defended Ahmadinejads statements challenging the Holocaust.
And after his goatee was chastised by the clerical leadership as being insufficiently Islamic, he grew it into a short beard. He has also sharply reduced his social media activities. Last year, there were no Rosh Hashanah tweets.
This article was written byKambiz Foroohar for Bloomberg on Mar. 18, 2015.
