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2025-03-05 Syria-Lebanon-Iran
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'Officials of Unfulfilled Hopes': Deepening Rift in Iran's Leadership
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Leonid Tsukanov
[REGNUM] The Iranian government continues to be rocked by high-profile resignations. Even before the Minister of Economy and Finance Abdolnasser Hemmati had left office after being ousted by impeachment, another political heavyweight, Iran's Vice President for Strategic Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif, was about to retire.
Zarif's resignation was initially perceived as a political demarche - especially since the vice president had previously demonstratively left his post (in August 2024). However, the current turn of events indicates serious changes in Iranian domestic politics.
The rift between the president's and the supreme leader's supporters is rapidly deepening, and in an attempt to maintain balance, reformists are choosing to get rid of overly toxic figures.
TOXIC MINISTERS
Although Hemmati and Zarif's career trajectories may not seem particularly similar at first glance, there are some overlaps.
In particular, both politicians were at one time introduced into the government as a “faction of hope” – to solve the most ambitious tasks set by President Masoud Pezeshkian.
Thus, Hemmati, the former head of the Iranian Central Bank, was supposed to “comprehensively rethink” the country’s economic strategy and bring Iran out of stagnation; find ways to lift (or, at first, at least to weaken) Western sanctions. Zarif, as the architect of the 2015 “nuclear deal,” was called upon to help the country “reset” the negotiations on “peaceful atom.”
Both points were cornerstones of the Iranian reformists' political program, and the failure to implement them has had a negative impact on the government's approval ratings.
Moreover, both officials became convenient targets for criticism from conservative forces.
Hemmati was branded a “saboteur” for the rapid (almost 50%) devaluation of the national currency, as well as attempts to artificially destabilize the country's economic system by forcibly introducing new types of cryptocurrency.
Zarif is even called a "conduit of interests" of the United States - for his excessive desire to find a compromise with Washington and his readiness to "sacrifice national interests" to achieve the set goal. They also do not forget to recall that in 2017, it was precisely because of the "excessive naivety" of the vice president (and then head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) that Tehran was unable to benefit from the unilateral withdrawal of the United States from the "nuclear deal"; he wasted time on empty negotiations instead of a mirror reduction in obligations.
Zarif, like Hemmati, should probably have resigned as a result of impeachment, especially since the Majlis (parliament – editor’s note) National Security Committee called for his removal from office back in early February after his scandalous speech at the forum in Davos.
Then Zarif criticized the Iranian authorities from the podium for “excesses” in their policy towards women, which was perceived by the conservative public as “a deliberate split in Iranian society.”
The vice president was saved from "public disgrace" only by the intercession of his old comrades. In particular, the head of the judiciary, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, who recommended that Zarif resign before the impeachment procedure was launched.
TRUMP'S TIME
Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election played no small role in the resignations of Hemmati and Zarif.
The reformists who came to power during the Biden administration built their foreign policy strategy with an eye on the strategic interests of the Democrats. And for a time, this approach even paid dividends.
Tehran, among other things, managed to negotiate a full prisoner exchange with Washington, as well as fully restore the “Oman track” of negotiations on peaceful nuclear energy, which was perceived as a step towards gradual detente and a “prologue” to negotiations on a new deal.
Trump's return to the White House has thrown previous agreements into question.
Even though the Republicans abandoned anti-Iranian rhetoric during the election campaign, in February 2025 Trump gave the order to resume the “maximum pressure policy” on Iran, and also de facto supported Israel in its asymmetric confrontation with Tehran throughout the Middle East.
A significant part of Iranian society was not ready to conduct direct negotiations with the US under such conditions, much less make concessions in sensitive areas. Especially since on the other side of the scale were threats of strikes (by the Israelis) against Iran's nuclear infrastructure.
Not surprisingly, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has made it clear that the country will not negotiate with the US on nuclear issues - even if the presidential team is willing to continue making concessions.
THE FUTURE OF THE DEAL
The situation is further aggravated by the fact that the “European troika” (France, Germany, Great Britain), which for most of the time took a pointedly neutral and benevolent position in the negotiations, is moving to “nudge” tactics.
Tehran is being asked to restore the “nuclear deal” in one form or another by the end of June.
Otherwise, the EU3 threatens to reinstate – and perhaps even strengthen – the UN Security Council sanctions on Iran’s nuclear developments. Such a move would further isolate Iran’s economic system and provoke additional tensions. And the country’s adversaries, both external and internal, will not fail to take advantage of them.
For this reason, the presidential entourage prefers not to enter into direct confrontation with the conservative forces (led by the Supreme Leader) and to carefully get rid of individual figures who “have not lived up to the expectations” of Iranian society.
However, while Hemmati was let go relatively easily, Iran’s leadership is reluctant to let Zarif go.
The bargaining over his candidacy continues. Pezeshkian hopes to resume the dialogue on the "peaceful atom" sooner or later. And he still sees Zarif as one of the main players - especially since the vice president will spend his "political retirement" at one of the country's universities, from where he can quickly be called back to service.
The Conservatives, apparently, do not object to such an outcome either - although they would prefer that the “officials of unfulfilled hopes” do not return to the fold for as long as possible.
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