Tehran, IRNA – A Reformist has staged a fierce defense of Vice-President for Strategic Affairs Javad Zarif against a barrage of criticism and scorn that has been met with relative silence from public officials.
Rasoul Montajab-Nia, a cleric and the secretary-general of the Jomhouriyat-e Iran-e Eslami Party, told IRNA on Wednesday that he is deeply suspicious of the intentions of those who have been throwing public insults at Zarif.
“I am strongly skeptical and suspicious of the intentions and goals of these individuals and groups… in whatever positions and clothes they may be,” Montajab-Nia said. “I don’t consider their behavior to have been carried out with good intentions or to be simply mistaken and misguided.”
He said he believed that “hands were at work” to push out Iran’s national assets and influential figures, for whom there would be no replacement.
Montajab-Nia called on the Judiciary to confront those who were insulting Zarif. “Curses, insults, and disrespect — no matter to whom it is extended — is a crime.”
In an interview with Fareed Zakaria of CNN on January 22, Zarif said that the Iranian government had decided to exercise leniency with regards to women not covering their hair in public, even though it was against the law. And he indirectly praised President Pezeshkian by setting his foreign policy against that of a would-have-been President Sa’eed Jalili, who ran against Pezeshkian and was defeated.
That triggered a firestorm of criticism against the Iranian vice-president, chiefly from Jalili’s associates.
A number of lawmakers, also mainly affiliated with Jalili, have been critical of Zarif’s appointment as vice-president, citing a law that prohibits individuals who hold foreign citizenship or whose immediate family members hold such citizenship from holding sensitive posts.
Zarif’s children acquired U.S. citizenship when they were born while he was a student in the United States decades ago. Under U.S. law, birth in the United States alone qualifies an individual for U.S. citizenship. Zarif and his family have long since returned to Iran.
The President Pezeshkian administration has forwarded a bill to Parliament to reform the law so that it accommodates the recruitment of individuals whose children did not acquire foreign nationality by choice — as in Zarif’s case.
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has effectively endorsed that bid at reform. Nevertheless, a chain of conservative figures have attacked Zarif in terms that are sometimes outright obscene. Among them is TV presenter-turned-lawmaker Amir-Hossein Sabeti who is closely associated with Jalili. And small numbers of people have picketed in Tehran and Mashhad, chanting slogans and holding banners with words such as “coward,” “wimpy,” “infiltrator,” etc.
On Monday, a lawmaker said 60 members of parliament had written a letter of complaint against Zarif to Attorney General Mohammad Movahhedi-Azad.
The administration of President Pezeshkian has been silent in the face of the attacks against the vice-president, in apparent adherence to its slogan of “national solidarity.”
Montajab-Nia referred to the scorn against Zarif and lamented that there had been no official reaction. He said gatherings in protest at different matters were being treated differently — a “discrimination” that he said was “questionable.”
“If a gathering requires a permit, everyone should be able to acquire one, and if it doesn’t, no one should have to be required to get a permit.”
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