In this February 23, 2021 file photo, Iran s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif addresses a conference in Tehran, Iran. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has replaced the head of a think tank that recorded an interview with the country’s foreign minister after it leaked out this week, providing a rare glimpse into the theocracy’s power struggles and setting off a firestorm in Iran.
In the recording of the conversation held in March 2020 between Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Saeed Leylaz, an economist at the Strategic Studies Center, the think tank associated with Iran’s presidency, Zarif offered a blunt appraisal of Iranian diplomacy and his constricted role in the Islamic Republic. Zarif also criticized the power of Qassem Soleimani, the late IRGC general killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani speaks in a cabinet meeting in Tehran, Iran, April 14, 2021. (Iranian Presidency Office via AP)
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani claimed Wednesday that Israel “directed” the assassination of former top general Qassem Soleimani, who was killed last year in a US airstrike after arriving in Baghdad.
“The martyrdom of General Soleimani was directed by the Zionists, even though Trump was the commander and killer,” Rouhani said, without providing any evidence for the claim.
Iran’s president also called former US president Donald Trump “a mercenary of the Zionist regime” and said “all his actions were provoked by the Zionists.”
Iranâs Foreign Minister, in Leaked Tape, Says Revolutionary Guards Set Policies
Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, described a rivalry with a powerful and widely revered military leader, Qassim Suleimani.
Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iranâs foreign minister.Credit.Russian Foreign Ministry/Agence France-Presse â Getty Images
April 25, 2021, 8:42 p.m. ET
In a leaked audiotape that offers a glimpse into the behind-the scenes power struggles of Iranian leaders, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the Revolutionary Guards Corps call the shots, overruling many government decisions and ignoring advice.
In one extraordinary moment on the tape that surfaced Sunday, Mr. Zarif departed from the reverential official line on Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the commander of the Guardsâ elite Quds Force, the foreign-facing arm of Iranâs security apparatus, who was killed by the United States in January 2020.
10 shares
Iran s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif attends a news conference in Caracas, Venezuela, November 5, 2020. (Matias Delacroix/AP)
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif criticized the power of Qassem Soleimani in leaks published Sunday from an interview he gave last year, saying the assassinated head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had been setting Tehran’s policy.
Zarif said that Soleimani had worked with Russia to sabotage the nuclear deal and acted in Syria’s long-running war in a way that damaged Tehran’s interests, as well as undermining him on a number of occasions, the New York Times reported.