Zarif, 59, has served as Rouhani’s foreign minister since August 2013 and has been under constant pressure from hardliners who opposed his policy of detente with the West. “I hope my resignation will act as a spur for the foreign ministry to regain its proper statutory role in the conduct of foreign affairs,” the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying. He also thanked the foreign ministry,” Rouhani said. The head of parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, told ISNA that it was not the first time Zarif had tendered his resignation. Zarif told Jomhoori Eslami that such partisan disputes over foreign policy were “a deadly poison.”

Source: The Guardian February 26, 2019 12:45 UTC