The announced resignation of Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif
remains clouded in uncertainty a day and a half later, with several
conflicting reports, and Iranian state media largely not addressing the
situation.
The initial report came out of Zarif’s Instagram account, which offered a
resignation and an apology for failures. The office of Iran’s President
Rouhani was said to have been aware of this, but had yet to accept the
resignation.
Not long after, there were reports, subsequently withdrawn,
that Rouhani had rejected the resignation. Iranian media has only said
he did not accept the resignation, and not that he’s expressly rejected
it.
Reuters speculated Zarif had problems with unnamed hardliners, but the US government-run Radio Farda claimed
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had told Zarif he disagreed with his
resignation, though the report conceded this was purely speculation, and
that Khamenei was not explicitly named in the report.
Ultimately, virtually nothing has been confirmed, and even the initial resignation on Instagram is in doubt, with Reuters reporting that the account wasn’t actually Zarif’s in the first place.
Presstv is reporting today that General Soleimani has re-affirmed the support for Dr Zarif from not only the Revolutionary Guards, but also of the Ayatollah himself. Trita Parsi was saying just yesterday that such a statement would put Dr Zarif in an even better position going forward. My hope is that he will be able to assist in defusing the situation between Pakistan and India. That’s one issue that most certainly requires true statesmen and diplomats to resolve.
Yesterday a segment of NPR’s exhaustive coverage of Zarif (“The World”) consisted entirely of interviewing an American who was detained in Iran and shamefully wasn’t given national media coverage to counter everything Zarif was saying. The American ridiculed Zarif’s allegation that there was more to the case than the public knew, of course such scrutiny of state secrets and indefinite detention never gets very far on NPR when it’s the US government that is making those claims.