The Trump administration is expected to sanction Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, any day now, and the announcement could offer a rare glimpse into the internal dealings of the country’s most traveled official.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters this week that the administration plans to target Zarif as part of a new round of sanctions on Iranian leadership. The announcement followed President Trump’s executive order Monday sanctioning Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his associates.
“The actions by the United States over the past few weeks have been confrontational, provocative,” Zarif told CNN afterwards. “Particularly the imposition of sanctions on Iranian leadership has been an additional insult by the United States against the entire Iranian nation.”
Zarif is widely considered one of the moderates in Iran’s government, along with President Hassan Rouhani. While many of Iran’s officials are elected, they are ultimately subordinate to Khamenei, and no one can run for office in the country without his approval. Some experts claim a rift exists between Khamenei’s hardliners and Rouhani’s moderates, though Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president of research for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Washington Examiner new sanctions against Zarif could put that theory in doubt.
“[W]hen we impose sanctions on individuals or companies, or even sectors of a given economy, there is an accompanying explanatory note that Treasury releases,” said Schanzer, a former Treasury Department analyst. “And those statements, unbeknownst to most people, are derived from declassified intelligence.”
That declassified intelligence could give the world its first glimpse into Zarif’s financial connections in Iran, including any ties to hard-line elements within the government.
Iranian leaders are known to use charitable foundations known as bonyads to conceal massive financial empires. While it is unclear whether Zarif has connections to any of these entities, sanctions against him could reveal such dealings, according to Schanzer.
“There’s sort of a risk-reward calculus for publishing this information, but at the end of the day, if there is derogatory information about him, beyond just simply representing the government of Iran, it will be fascinating to see it,” Schanzer said.
Zarif, 59, has become the face of the Iranian government in the West, particularly since the nuclear deal was signed in 2015. He speaks fluent English and received a doctoral degree from the University of Denver, the alma mater of former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. Zarif’s frequent media appearances and diplomatic disposition earned him the sarcastic title of Iran’s “charmer-in-chief.”
Zarif has often presented Iran as a victim of Western — specifically U.S. — aggression. He reiterates that Iran seeks nothing more than peaceful cooperation with its neighbors and the world, yet many of his statements have proven to be demonstrably false.
In 2018, Zarif denied Iranian leaders have ever called for Israel to be wiped off the map, despite “Death to Israel” being a common chant at government rallies.
When asked in 2015 about the imprisonment of Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, Zarif said, “We do not jail people for their opinions.” (Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee is in an Iranian prison for writing an unpublished short story about stoning, to give just one example.)
Just this month, Zarif defended his country’s practice of executing homosexuals, telling Germany’s Bild magazine that “these are moral principles concerning the behavior of people in general.”
Whatever Zarif’s intentions may be, some experts are doubtful sanctioning him will have any practical effect.
“If you genuinely want negotiations, then I think something like that is most likely to backfire, just because he would be one of the primary people doing the negotiating,” Sam Dorshimer, a researcher with the Center for a New American Security, told the Washington Examiner. “[I]t does make it difficult for moderates and incentivizes them away from any sort of compromise.”
Trump’s newest round of sanctions followed Iran’s shootdown of a U.S. drone over international waters in the Gulf of Oman last week. The United States has steadily increased its military presence in the region over the past month in response to intelligence indicating Iranian threats and has pursued a campaign of maximum pressure against the regime since Trump withdrew the country from the Iran nuclear deal last year.
