Iran’s Raisi presents conservative, male-only Cabinet

TEHRAN — Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi on Wednesday presented his Cabinet to parliament, state media said, nominating a conservative as his top diplomat amid talks with world powers to salvage a nuclear deal.

A list published by the government on Twitter showed a conservative-dominated, male-only cabinet of ministers that is set to be officially announced by parliament on Saturday.

Iran’s parliament, which is currently dominated by conservatives, is charged with validating the line-up of ministerial candidates.

Ultraconservative Raisi last week succeeded Hassan Rouhani, a moderate whose landmark achievement during his two-term presidency was the 2015 agreement that gave Iran relief from sanctions in return for curbs on its nuclear programme.

Former US president Donald Trump torpedoed the accord three years later by unilaterally withdrawing the United States from it and imposing crushing sanctions.

Tapped to lead the foreign ministry is 56-year-old Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, described by state television as a “prestigious diplomat of the resistance axis”.

Seen by local media as an establishment figure with close ties to regional allies including Lebanon’s Hizbollah, he often pens foreign policy articles for the website of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Amir-Abdollahian was Iran’s pointman for talks with US officials at a 2007 joint committee in Baghdad concerning the security situation in Iraq.

“Negotiating with America has never been a taboo,” he tweeted in 2018, referring to the Baghdad talks, adding that the issue was “America’s bullying” behaviour.

Raisi also named ex-deputy oil minister and managing director of the national gas company Javad Owji as his oil minister.

Former oil minister Admiral Rostam Ghasemi, an economic affairs aide to the head of the Revolutionary Guard elite Al Quds force and a presidential candidate, was nominated to be transport minister.

Like Ghasemi, Raisi’s picks to head the interior and tourism ministries — Amir Vahidi and Ezzatollah Zarghami, respectively — are former Guard members who are under US sanctions.

Six rounds of nuclear talks between Iran and world powers were held in Vienna between April and June in an attempt to revive the accord.

The last round concluded on June 20, with no date set for another. Iranian officials had said talks would not resume before the new government took over.

A veteran of Gulf affairs, Amir-Abdollahian served under the foreign minister from 2011 as deputy for Arab and African affairs before being replaced in 2016, a move heavily criticised by Rouhani’s conservative opponents.

Amir-Abdollahian later turned down an offer to be Iran’s ambassador to Oman, according to ISNA news agency. He has since served as an special aide for international affairs to the last two parliament speakers.