Page 9 - MEOG Week 33 2021

MEOG POLICY MEOG
Hawkish foreign ministry veteran proposed as Iran’s top diplomat
IRAN
HAWKISH foreign ministry veteran Hossein Amirabdollahian was on August 11 proposed as the choice of Iran’s new president, Ebrahim Raisi, to succeed Mohammad Javad Zarif as the coun- try’s foreign minister.
Raisi also named Javad Owji, an ex-deputy oil minister and managing director of the state-run gas company, as his choice to succeed oil minis- ter Bijan Zanganeh.
Raisi, a hardline mid-ranking Shi’ite cleric, has presented his intended cabinet to parliament for vote of confidence, which is not expected to throw up any obstacles.
Amirabdollahian, a fluent Arabic speaker who has close ties to the military, might as Iran’s top diplomat be expected to take charge of the stalled negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and six major powers, but there have been reports this week in semi-offi- cial Iranian media that suggested the Supreme National Security Council, which reports directly to hardline Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would take over the negotia- tions. The talks, which involve indirect contacts between Iranian and US diplomats in Vienna, were under the previous government led by moderates serving under then president Hassan Rouhani.
“Amirabdollahian is a hardline diplomat ... If the foreign ministry remains in charge of Iran’s nuclear dossier, then obviously Tehran will adopt a very tough line in the [Vienna] talks [once they are restarted],” an Iranian nuclear negotiator,
who asked not to be named, told Reuters. Amirabdollahian is thought to have close links with Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and other militant groups allied with Iran around
the Middle East.
Amirabdollahian is also a former ambassador
to Bahrain, while he served as deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs between 2011 and 2016. He was deputy chief of mission at Iran’s embassy in Baghdad from 1997-2001.
Owji has held top positions in Mofid Eco- nomics Group and Petro Mofid Development Holding, two subsidiaries of Setad Ejraiye Far- mane Hazrate Emam (Headquarters for Exe- cuting the Order of the Imam) according to the Iranian oil ministry’s news agency Shana.
Raisi also nominated several IRGC com- manders as ministers, including former defence minister and commander of Iran’s expedition- ary Quds Force, Ahmad Vahidi, as his interior minister.
In 2007, Argentine secured Interpol arrest warrants for four Iranians, including Vahidi, for their alleged role in the 1994 bombing of a Jew- ish centre in Buenos Aires. Iran has denied any involvement in the bombing that killed 85 people and injured hundreds.
Former oil minister Rostam Qasemi, also an IRGC commander who headed the elite military body’s construction and engineering company in the past, was nominated by Raisi as the minister for roads and urbanisation.™
New Oil Minister Jawad Owji
Week 33 18•August•2021 w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m P9