Minister who smiled his way to historic deal

It is hard to picture Iran’s nuclear talks with world powers without the beaming face of foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif who, in reaching a deal, has shown the power of what Iranians call ‘smile diplomacy’.

The 55-year old career diplomat led Iran’s negotiating team in concluding a deal with world powers in Vienna yesterday after almost two years of negotiations, to curb Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief after decades of tensions with the West.

However, Zarif, who has spent long spells studying or working in the US, needed the support of President Hassan Rouhani, and the cautious backing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, to protect him from domestic opponents whose distrust of the West has characterised Iranian policy since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

His easy smile and his mastery of English helped him build up a rapport with foreign diplomats, particularly US Secretary of State John Kerry, with whom he is on first-name terms.

He also shunned the bombastic and confrontational language that had become the hallmark of the Islamic Republic’s officials.

“When Zarif and his team started doing the negotiations in 2013, the whole atmosphere of the room changed,” said John Limbert, former deputy assistant secretary of state for Iran at the State Department.

“Kerry and Zarif have a similar approach to diplomacy. What strikes me in both of them is that they understand the importance of being patient.

“They have the ability to listen, to be persistent and never give up,” he said.

Zarif’s familiarity with Western culture comes from time living in the US, first from the age of 17 as a student in San Francisco and Denver and subsequently as a diplomat to the UN in New York, where he served as Iranian ambassador from 2002 to 2007.

He developed direct contacts with US officials, despite this being a political taboo back in Iran, which served him well in the 1990s when he was involved in negotiations to free US hostages held by the pro-Iranian Hezbollah group in Lebanon.

Some hardliners have called him a coward for studying in the US in the 1980s rather than defending his country in the 1980-88 war with Iraq, in which Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had Western and Gulf Arab support.