Iran has
US Educated Foreign Minister
Hassan Rohani’s
appointment of Mohammad Javad Zarif
as his foreign minister suggests the new Iranian president would like to break
the 34-year impasse between the Islamic Republic and the U.S.
Zarif, 53, a fluent English speaker who earned his doctorate at
the University of Denver, is a former ambassador to the United Nations who has
been involved in several secret negotiations between the U.S. and Iran over the
past 20 years.
Rohani, 64, who took his oath of office on 3 Aug, said the U.S. and
the European Union should drop sanctions imposed to stop the country’s nuclear
enrichment program. Over the past year, the sanctions have crippled Iran’s
economy, sending inflation above 40 percent while the
national currency the rial has lost more than 50 percent of its value against the dollar.
The
new president named several former ministers in his cabinet, which he announced
at the end of his inauguration ceremony. Apart from Zarif,
Rohani named Bijan Namdar Zanganeh to head the oil
ministry and Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh as the Minister
of Industry, Mines and Trade. Rohani’s chief of staff
will be Mohammad Nahavandian, the former head of
Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Mines, who earned a PhD in economics
from George Washington University in 1994.
In
a statement released an hour after Rohani spoke, the
White House said it would be “a willing partner” if Rohani’s
government decides “to engage substantively and seriously” in honoring its international obligations and works toward a
peaceful solution to the nuclear issue.
A bipartisan group of 76 U.S. senators urged President Barack
Obama in an Aug. 2 letter to “toughen sanctions and reinforce the credibility
of our option to use military force at the same time as we fully explore a
diplomatic solution to our dispute with Iran.”
Born
in 1960 in Tehran, Zarif obtained a PhD in
International Law and Policy from the University of Denver and also attended
San Francisco State University as a graduate student. He was closely linked
with developing the so-called”Grand Bargain,” a plan
to resolve outstanding issues between the U.S. and Iran in 2003, according to Trita Parsi, president of
National Iranian American Council, which opposes sanctions.