Iran\u2019s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, a hard-liner close to the country\u2019s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard who confronted the West while also overseeing indirect talks with the US over the country\u2019s nuclear programme, died in the helicopter crash that also killed the country\u2019s president, state media reported on Monday. He was 60. Amirabdollahian represented the hard-line shift in Iran after the collapse of Tehran\u2019s nuclear deal with world powers after then-US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord. He served under President Ebrahim Raisi, a prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and followed their policies.<\/p>\n
However, Amirabdollahian also was involved in efforts to reach a d\u00e9tente with regional rival Saudi Arabia in 2023, a move eclipsed months later by tensions that arose over the Israel-Hamas war. But he remained close to the country\u2019s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, once praising the late Gen. Qassem Soleimani, slain in a US drone strike in Baghdad in 2020. \u201cYou should thank the Islamic Republic and Qassem Soleimani because Soleimani has contributed to world peace and security,\u201d Amirabdollahian once said. \u201cIf there was no Islamic Republic, your metro stations and gathering centres in Brussels, London and Paris would not be safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amirabdollahian served in the Foreign Ministry under Ali Akbar Salehi in 2011 through 2013. He then returned for several years under Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who was a key player in the nuclear deal reached under the administration of the relative moderate President Hassan Rouhani. But Zarif and Amirabdollahian had a falling out, likely over internal differences in Iran\u2019s foreign policy. Zarif offered him the ambassadorship to Oman, still a strategically important post given the sultanate long serving as an interlocutor between Iran and the West. But Amirabdollahian refused.<\/p>\n
He became foreign minister under Raisi with his election in 2021. He backed the Iranian government position, even as mass protests swept the country in 2022 after the death of Mahsa Amini, a woman who had been earlier detained over allegedly not wearing a hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of authorities. The months-long security crackdown that followed the demonstrations killed more than 500 people and saw over 22,000 detained. In March, a United Nations investigative panel found that Iran was responsible for the \u201cphysical violence\u201d that led to Amini\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
During the Israel-Hamas war, he met with foreign officials and the leader of Hamas. He also threatened retaliation against Israel and praised an April attack on Israel. He also oversaw Iran\u2019s response to a brief exchange of airstrikes with Iran\u2019s nuclear-armed neighbour Pakistan and worked on diplomacy with the Taliban in Afghanistan, with whom Iran had tense relations. Amirabdollhian is survived by his wife and two children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Iran\u2019s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, a hard-liner close to the country\u2019s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard who confronted the West while also\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":44678,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[2108,14174,1380,8036,14175,13128,3141,1418,536,4916],"class_list":["post-44677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-death","tag-east-azerbaijan-province","tag-gaza","tag-helicopter-crash","tag-irans-foreign-minister-hossein-amirabdollahian","tag-iranian-president-ebrahim-raisi","tag-irgc","tag-israel-hamas-war","tag-palestine","tag-regional-tensions"],"reading_time":"3 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}