Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf announced on Sunday that President Masoud Bezazkian has nominated Abbas Araghchi to take the position of Foreign Minister, according to the Student News Network. So, what do we know about him?
Abbas Araghchi is a diplomat and politician born in 1962. He holds a bachelor's degree in international relations from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' College of International Relations, a master's degree in political science from the Islamic Azad University in Tehran, and a Ph.D. in political thought from Kent University. He was a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps during the Iran-Iraq War and began his career at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1988.
He served as his country's ambassador to Finland from 1999 to 2003 and to Japan from 2007 to 2011. In 2013, he was the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for four months in the tenth government. From 2013 to 2017, he was the Deputy Foreign Minister for legal and international affairs. After a restructuring of the ministry, he held the position of political assistant to the Foreign Minister from 2017 to 2021. From 2017 to 2021, he was the political assistant to former Foreign Minister and current President Mohamad Javad Zarif. He currently serves as a senior advisor to the Foreign Minister and is a member of the National Diplomacy Association and the Secretary of the Strategic Council for Foreign Relations of Iran (a position he has held since 2021).
**Nuclear Negotiations**
He was appointed Deputy Foreign Minister in Hassan Rouhani's government by Mohammad Javad Zarif and became a member of the Iranian nuclear negotiation team in 2013. Alongside Araghchi, diplomats such as Hamid Pidi Najad and Davood Mohammadnia were also selected as members of the team, with Mohammad Javad Zarif leading the delegation.
Araghchi was present at all the bilateral negotiations conducted by Iran with the P5+1 group. On the final day of the first round of the Geneva talks (2013), he announced the success of reaching a preliminary agreement on Iran's nuclear program, posting a message titled "White smoke rises from Geneva talks" on his Twitter page. He also served as the chief negotiator throughout the negotiations until the conclusion and establishment of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, known as the nuclear agreement. He was considered Iran's second person in the talks after Zarif.
When negotiations to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action began following the U.S. withdrawal, Araghchi was chosen as the head of the negotiation team and traveled to the Austrian capital, Vienna, for consultations with the political aides and directors of the foreign ministries of Germany, France, England, Russia, and China, and Enrique Mora, the EU’s foreign policy chief, on April 6, 2021.
