Hassan Rouhani met his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad on Monday - without Mr Zarif. ©AFP
Posted on 02/27/2019 10:45:21 AM PST by SunkenCiv
"I would like to sincerely apologise for not being able to continue my service and for all my shortcomings during my service," he wrote on Instagram on Monday night.
On Tuesday morning, he urged fellow diplomats not to follow his lead and suggested that he had resigned because he felt he had been sidelined.
"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," he said.
He was also quoted by the centrist newspaper Jomhuri Eslami as saying in an interview that political infighting was hampering the foreign ministry's work.
"The deadly poison for foreign policy is for foreign policy to become an issue of party and factional fighting," he said.
Mr Zarif's exclusion from top-level meetings in Tehran on Monday during the previously unannounced visit of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was the final straw.
When photos were released showing Mr Assad attending talks with President Rouhani and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Mr Zarif saw them as a new low for his ministry's role in overseeing Iran's foreign policy.
He wrote in a message to a reporter for a reformist newspaper that that the pictures had left him with "no credibility in the world as Iran's foreign minister"...
But it was not until Wednesday morning that Mr Rouhani formally rejected Mr Zarif's resignation.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
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