I wrote this piece for Tehran Bureau lately and they published it. My great friend Arash helped me with edit and re-write and I like the final outcome. It gives a good view on Iran’s current foreign minister who I know him very well since he was Iran envoy to IAEA.
Image by IAEA Imagebank via Flickr
I followed his career and ambitions and I think he might be the new favorite on Ayatollah Khamenei, supreme leader in Iran. Although in light of recent events and the attack on UK embassy in Tehran, I cannot imagine how any top diplomat could survive the embaressment.
I leave you a part of story here and you can read the rest in the given URL at the end.
Salehi was never fully accepted, particularly by Hassan Rowhani, a political insider who was chief negotiator with Europe for Iran’s nuclear program and a member of the Supreme National Security Council, which coordinates nuclear policy under the Supreme Leader’s guidance. Rowhani derisively referred to Salehi as a “foreigner” because of his birth in Karbala, Iraq, years of study at the American University of Beirut, and ability to speak fluent Arabic.
Salehi has stated that he felt “cut off from the team” during his tenure as IAEA envoy. After writing a letter to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in which he articulated his concerns, he left the country for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he worked on education programs as deputy secretary-general of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (now the Organization of Islamic Cooperation) from 2007 to 2009.
In 2009, Ahmadinejad brought Salehi back to head Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, which is the primary body responsible for operating and regulating nuclear energy activities around the country.
Ahmadinejad has championed the development of Iran’s nuclear program and it thus seemed odd that Salehi would reenter Iranian politics at his hands and in such a position. Aside from having typically filled key posts with friends and allies, Ahmadinejad has evinced a particular disdain for those who served in the administration of the reformist Khatami. However, one of the top engineers at the Isfahan nuclear facility observed, “People who work on the nuclear program are not political and are not prone to make trouble through partisan in-fighting.”
