Mohammad Javad Zarif: Former Foreign Minister, Presidential Hopeful?

Former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif never misses an opportunity to declare his unwillingness to run for president, which may serve the purpose of stimulating public demand for him to run. In recent interviews, Zarif, in an attempt to endear himself to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has criticized the reformist camp for its effort to rein in the power of Iran’s head of state and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for alienating voters. This middle position is not likely to do him any good: Zarif is unlikely to receive Khamenei’s green light to run for office, and voters are unlikely to respond well to his lip service to Khamenei.

• March 14: In what appears to be an audio recording of Zarif meeting with students that was later leaked by IranWire, a London-based news site, the former foreign minister disclosed the roots of Khamenei’s conflict with the reformists and once again stressed that he has no presidential ambitions:
  • “Let me tell you this: By 1999, the reformists were pursuing an exclusionary agenda, in effect declaring that they wanted a constitutional revision. This was after the parliamentary elections. But if you want to exclude someone,” referencing Khamenei, “when you threaten someone’s existence, that person will threaten your existence … Try and think when the leader began wearing a Basij scarf … It was back in 1999. I had a portrait of the leader in my office at the Foreign Ministry. I changed it. Back then, all the portraits of him were without the Basij scarf. Why did he begin wearing the Basij scarf? Because of the reform movement. The reformists were trying to exclude the leader,” which led Khamenei to increasingly rely on the Basij militia and IRGC to counterbalance pressure from reformists, Zarif argued. Zarif continued: “In my opinion, the leftists are much more monopolistic than the rightists. Once, I told” former President Mohammad “Khatami: ‘Your comrades used to call us liberals. Now, they have become much more liberal than us, and they still disagree with us!’”
  • Asked if he is interested in running for president, Zarif responded: “No, never … I have said this in an interview with Faraz and in another interview with Ettelaat. Someone asked, ‘Will you be disqualified?’ And I said I am not running at all.”
  • Asked about the importance of electoral participation, Zarif said: “High electoral participation is important for the leader … But when we deal with the real core of power, the electoral participation rate is of no importance to them. The leader, too, is operating within the framework of power.” Referring to Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, former IRGC chief commander, and Hossein Taeb, former IRGC Intelligence Organization director, Zarif continued: “They are in charge of everything. He and Taeb are the ones who mastermind elections. They have a headquarters for this.”

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