This Is The Man Who Runs Iran's Foreign Policy

Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei

Foreign Policy: The Man Who Actually Runs Iran’s Foreign Policy

Tehran’s course is set by a shadowy figure behind the scenes—not the leaders who talk to the West.

Mohammad Javad Zarif has been Iran’s foreign minister for the past five years. In that time, he has become a familiar face in the West, earning a reputation as one of the key people to talk to to resolve any given disagreement with Tehran. It helps that he went to graduate school in Colorado, acquiring fluent English along the way—and that he has a reputation for being one of the leading figures in Iran’s camp of reformist officials.

Over the past two years, however, Zarif’s power has dramatically waned. Although he has continued his speaking tours in the West, he has been supplanted on the regional policy portfolios that most matter to Tehran—including Iran’s presence in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen—by a quieter but far more influential figure: Ali Akbar Velayati, the longtime foreign-policy advisor to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

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WNU Editor: Ali Akbar Velayati has the ear of The Supreme Leader and is also his point-man .... and in Iran that is the political contact that counts. Case in point on how important he is .... Top aide delivers Iran’s Leader message to Putin (Press TV).