Mr. Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear agreement was a blow to relative moderates like Mr. Zarif and Mr. Rouhani. But Mr. Zarif has worked to maintain as much of the deal as possible with Europe while also advocating moves that would give Iran greater access to the international financial system, efforts that now appear to be in jeopardy.
General Soleimani has long been a shadowy figure in charge of Iran’s often secretive military operations abroad. These include maintaining ties with Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group and political party, and other militias in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere.
General Soleiman’s star has risen as Iran has exploited the chaos that followed the Arab Spring uprisings to expand its influence. Photos of the silver-haired general now pop up regularly on social media, showing him visiting Iranian-aligned forces in different conflicts across the Middle East.
Iran and the militias it backs played a critical role in helping Mr. Assad turn the tide against rebels seeking to oust him in the early years of Syria’s civil war. And General Soleimani visited Russia in the summer of 2015, before Russia also intervened militarily in the war, leading to a string of rebel defeats and strengthening ties between Russia and Iran.
The inner workings of Iran’s government are often opaque.
Some analysts suspected that Mr. Zarif’s resignation was a gambit to strengthen his position by forcing public endorsements from the country’s other top power brokers. But those statements of support are unlikely to restore Mr. Zarif’s clout on key foreign issues, said Henry Rome, an Iran analyst at the Eurasia Group, a Washington-based political risk consultancy.
And Mr. Zarif’s move has little chance of meaningfully improving his ministry’s stature in foreign policy decision-making — especially in Syria, which has long been outside of the diplomats’ remit, he said.
While the office of the foreign minister has never been very powerful in Iran, it is less likely to be so during a time of multiple crises, said Karim Sadjadpour, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who studies Iran.
“As long as the Islamic Republic is faced with internal and external insecurity, the security forces of the country will be in the driver’s seat, not civilians,” Mr. Sadjadpour said.
Source : Nytimes
