Zarif asked people to forgive him; Amir Abdollahian says he will not "tie the Foreign Ministry to the JCPOA"

Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the proposed Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ebrahim Raisi's government, said on Sunday, August 21, during a session to review his qualifications in the Islamic Consultative Assembly, that he would not "tie the Foreign Ministry to the JCPOA" and that "we will engage in negotiations that are not erosive."

Six rounds of negotiations between Iran and world powers to revive the JCPOA nuclear agreement have so far yielded no results, and it is still unclear what approach Ebrahim Raisi's government will take to continue the negotiations.

Although the United States says it is ready to resume negotiations, Washington has emphasized that Iran's opportunity to return to the negotiating table will not be unlimited.

Amir Abdollahian also said he would support the “Resistance Front,” a term used by Iranian officials to refer to the Islamic Republic’s proxy groups in the Middle East, particularly in Syria and Lebanon.

At the meeting to review Amir Abdollahian's qualifications, a number of representatives spoke in favor and against his appointment as Foreign Minister.

Ali Asghar Anabestani, a representative from Sabzevar, opposed the government's proposed Foreign Minister Ebrahim Raisi and said, "There is a history of cooperation between Mr. Amir Abdollahian and Mr. Zarif and Larijani that worries us a bit."

Hossein Amir-Abdollahian was the Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab Affairs in Hassan Rouhani's government for a while, but was dismissed by Mohammad Javad Zarif.

Mr. Zarif bid farewell to his audience on Sunday by releasing a video message, asking the public to forgive him for his actions.

In part of the message, Zarif said: "Forgive me, but in order to protect national interests, I could not always speak as I would have liked and even defend my actions."

He also said: "Many of you did not like the silence or justification of some policies and behaviors, some of which I myself have been critical of, and some even resorted to self-interest and attempts to maintain the status quo."

Mr. Zarif's critics and opponents have previously criticized him on various issues for "justifying" and "reversing" the Islamic Republic's harmful policies in the international arena.

In a controversial interview that was not supposed to be published but was leaked to the media in May of this year, the Rouhani government's foreign minister said about the downing of the Ukrainian plane by the Revolutionary Guards: "The world is saying that the plane was hit by a missile. If it really was hit by a missile, tell us so we can see how we can fix it."

The State Department of the Donald Trump administration had dubbed Zarif "the great swindler."