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| Iran’s Foreign Minister, Architect of Nuclear Deal, Says He Is Resigning | |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| ISTANBUL — Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif of Iran announced Monday that he was resigning, in what seemed a sudden end to the tenure of one of the Islamic Republic’s best-known figures abroad. | |
| Mr. Zarif, an American-educated diplomat who was an architect of the Iranian nuclear deal, announced that he was stepping down in a post on his Instagram account. | |
| It was not immediately clear why he was quitting or whether his resignation would be accepted. In the post, he said he apologized “for my inability to continue serving and for all the shortcomings during my service.” | |
| His resignation announcement also was reported by Iran’s Fars News Agency. | |
| Mr. Zarif’s public resignation in a country where governance is usually conducted behind closed doors seemed to indicate escalating tensions between the country’s hard-liners and President Hassan Rouhani. | |
| Iran is in the midst of a dire economic crisis, exacerbated by American sanctions aimed at punishing it for what the United States considers destabilizing Iranian actions abroad. This has increased pressure on Mr. Rouhani. | |
| The loss of Mr. Zarif could make Mr. Rouhani’s job harder, because Mr. Zarif was the only top Iranian official with a deep understanding of Western diplomacy and the ability to interact directly with the West. He was a regular at international forums, where he offered spirited defenses of his country’s policies in fluent English. | |
| Addressing experts and policymakers from around the world at the Munich Security Conference this month, Mr. Zarif struck back at criticisms that Iran was destabilizing the Middle East. He said Washington had an “unhealthy fixation” with Iran and called the United States “the biggest source of destabilization in our neighborhood.” | |
| Mr. Zarif also was known for his collaboration with John Kerry, the secretary of state under President Barack Obama who negotiated the 2015 international pact limiting Iran’s nuclear activities. Mr. Trump withdrew the United States from that agreement last May, and later reimposed sanctions that had been lifted under the deal. The other parties to the agreement — Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia — have said they want to preserve it. | |
| Mr. Zarif’s role in dealing with the United States has left him vulnerable to attacks from hard-liners who contend the Americans should never be trusted. | |
| In Iran, the resignation of the foreign minister must be accepted by the president before it goes into effect, which can sometimes lead to resignation announcements being made to send political messages. It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Rouhani would accept the resignation. | |
| Political analysts who have followed the course of the nuclear agreement said Mr. Zarif’s resignation, if accepted, did not necessarily signal the agreement’s demise. | |
| “Iran is still very likely to wait out Trump’s first term, hope he loses, and engage a Democratic successor on resuming U.S. participation,” said Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group, a Washington-based political risk consultancy. | |
| “But Iran without Zarif would face a rocky road on foreign policy,” Mr. Kupchan said. “This foreign minister is a smiling face to the world, who has charmed many interlocutors. The Islamic Republic would be very hard pressed to find a successor so skilled.” |