Iran’s Overseas Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, a hard-line diplomat, dies in helicopter crash
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s Overseas Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, a hard-liner near the nation’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard who confronted the West whereas additionally overseeing oblique talks with the U.S. over the nation’s nuclear program, died in the helicopter crash that additionally killed the nation’s president, state media reported Monday. He was 60.
Amirabdollahian represented the hard-line shift in Iran after the collapse of Tehran’s nuclear cope with world powers after then-U.S. President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord. He served beneath President Ebrahim Raisi, a protégé of Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and adopted their insurance policies.
Nevertheless, Amirabdollahian additionally was concerned in efforts to succeed in a détente with regional rival Saudi Arabia in 2023, a transfer eclipsed months later by tensions that arose over the Israel-Hamas struggle. However he remained near the nation’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, as soon as praising the late Gen. Qassem Soleimani, slain in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad in 2020.
“It’s best to thank the Islamic Republic and Qassem Soleimani as a result of Soleimani has contributed to world peace and safety,” Amirabdollahian as soon as mentioned. “If there was no Islamic Republic, your metro stations and gathering facilities in Brussels, London and Paris wouldn’t be protected.”
Amirabdollahian served within the Overseas Ministry beneath Ali Akbar Salehi in 2011 by way of 2013. He then returned for a number of years beneath Overseas Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who was a key participant within the nuclear deal reached beneath the administration of the relative average President Hassan Rouhani.
However Zarif and Amirabdollahian had a falling out, seemingly over inner variations in Iran’s international coverage. Zarif provided him the ambassadorship to Oman, nonetheless a strategically vital publish given the sultanate lengthy serving as an interlocutor between Iran and the West. However Amirabdollahian refused.
He turned international minister beneath Raisi together with his election in 2021. He backed the Iranian authorities place, whilst mass protests swept the nation in 2022 after the dying of Mahsa Amini, a girl who had been earlier detained over allegedly not carrying a hijab, or scarf, to the liking of authorities. The monthslong safety crackdown that adopted the demonstrations killed greater than 500 folks and noticed over 22,000 detained.
In March, a United Nations investigative panel discovered that Iran was accountable for the “bodily violence” that led to Amini’s dying.
Throughout the Israel-Hamas struggle, he met with international officers and the chief of Hamas. He additionally threatened retaliation towards Israel and praised an April assault on Israel. He additionally oversaw Iran’s response to a short alternate of airstrikes with Iran’s nuclear-armed neighbor Pakistan and labored on diplomacy with the Taliban in Afghanistan, with whom Iran had tense relations.
Amirabdollhian is survived by his spouse and two youngsters.
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Related Press author Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.
