Iran foreign minister-designate: Negotiating with US not a taboo
Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, is the only minister in President Ebrahim Raisi's proposed cabinet who has started his work even before being officially nominated as the next Foreign Minister.
He held a two-hour-long meeting with EU's representative Enrique Mora after Raisi's inauguration last week to convince he EU diplomat that Iran is adamant to return to the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
Amir-Abdollahian is a career diplomat whose previous positions at the Foreign Ministry were deputy foreign minister for Arab and African Affairs, and Iran's ambassador to Oman in 2016.
However, he refused to go to Musqat and had to move on and join the Iranian Parliament as international affairs adviser to Majles Speaker Ali Larijani and his successor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.
Amir-Abdollahian is known to be an advocate of Iran's Supreme Leader's "Looking East" policy and Iran's 25-year pact with China.
Amir-Abdollahian recently posted his picture in a meeting with US officials at Baghdad's Green Zone on Twitter and asserted that "Negotiating with the United States is not a taboo."
He said he has been in direct talks with Americans in Baghdad three times. "Negotiating with America is not a problem. What is a problem is America's arrogant behavior," he said.
According to a recent report, the two most urgent topics on Amir Abdollahian's agenda are returning to the JCPOA and restoring Iran's ties with Saudi Arabia.
Amir Abdollahian believes "no changes will happen in the Middle East before relations with the United States are put in good shape."
Amir Abdollahian, 57, studied international relations in Iran and has written a book about Syria entitled: "The Dawn of Levant."
He fails to mend ties with Washington, because most regional countries are politically aligned with the United States.
Iranian political analyst Ali Bigdeli also said also concurred that Amir Abdollahian has never been a powerful nuclear negotiator although he was briefly involved in the JCPOA talks.
Bigdeli stressed that he will have no success in this area if Tehran’s and Washington's attitudes in the Vienna talks to restore JCPOA do not change.
Yet another analyst Abdolreza Faraji said that Amir-Abdollahian will have to play a key part in reducing tensions in the region.
He added that Iraq's initiative to mediate between Iran and Saudi Arabia works, this will also be counted as a success for Amir Abdollahian.
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