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By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with [2]
Mohammed Javad Zarif [3] (lead images) has grown fatter and more swollen-headed since he was replaced as Iran’s Foreign Minister in 2021, then removed as Vice President in 2025 [4].
In Moscow, Zarif is known as a Russia-hating, backstabbing liar who negotiates with deceit and whose word is worthless. Click for more [5].
For Zarif to publish last week an essay [6] titled “How Iran Should End the War – A Deal Tehran Could Take”, from the tribune of the money establishment in New York, the Council on Foreign Relations, is understandable in Moscow. This is because, comments a Moscow source in position to know, he is “registering his address in Teheran at the very least to tell the Americans to target their bombs and missiles elsewhere. He hates Russians and someone is promoting him. The US has shown what they do with discussions, plans, ideas through the negotiations,” the source said. “They have demonstrated there is zero or less regard for any idea. Trump is fixated on ‘stone age’ destruction and ‘capitulation.’ If and when he does a ceasefire, it will be so he can break it. That’s a lesson the North Koreans alone seem to have learned and not anyone else. “
This is a guarded reference to the Russian look and sound-alikes in Moscow telling President Vladimir Putin to trust President Donald Trump’s “Anchorage understandings [7]” and to end the war on the Ukraine battlefield with schemes for US investments in exchange for Russian assets.
Just so, Zarif’s end-of-war plan includes [6] the proposal “to further consolidate peace, Iran and the United States should initiate mutually beneficial trade, economic, and technological cooperation. Iran, for example, could invite oil companies, including interested American ones, to immediately facilitate exports to buyers. Iran, the United States, and Persian Gulf countries might all partner on projects involving energy and advanced technologies. .. Finally, Iran and the United States should announce and sign a permanent nonaggression pact. By doing so, they would commit to not use or threaten to use force against each other.”
The Russian promoting the same combination of trust in Trump, trust in money that talks through Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner – not yet in the pages of Foreign Affairs – is Kirill Dmitriev [8]. He too is described by his Russian critics as too pro-American to be trusted.
The Iranian Prosecutor is reported [9] to have issued a reprimand for Zarif. “According to follow-up and information from informed sources, following the publication of an article in the American journal Foreign Affairs that has been determined to be contrary to national security, Mohammad Javad Zarif has been issued a reprimand. In this regard, the Prosecutor’s Office, issuing a warning addressed to political figures and those with a public platform, emphasized: ‘During this imposed war, figures and those with a platform must not express opinions or publish material contrary to national interests, national integrity, and social cohesion, nor outside the bounds of their authority.'” The Russian Security Council is highly critical of Dmitriev but he is in no danger from the state prosecutor.
Iran International [10], the Shah Pahlavi opposition publication financed by Saudi Arabia in London, has quoted the reaction to Zarif by a well-known Iranian government supporter: “Even someone who is blind, deaf, and mute can understand that you [Zarif] are a traitor. In the middle of this proposal you call for improved relations between Iran and the US, an enemy that killed my leader and has shown such disrespect to Iran. I give Zarif three days. If he does not say he screwed up, on the fourth night we will gather and go to (storm) his house.”
The same publication claims that Zarif’s publication accompanies a recent speech by Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s president between 2013-21 and Zarif’s political patron, behind the closed doors of the Supreme National Security Council. Rouhani reportedly said [11]: “Alongside heroic resistance, we must be prepared to bring the war to an honourable end in the interest of the country and the people. Preserving the country and the system requires immediate fundamental reforms in policymaking; the people have made their position clear to the authorities…it was necessary to coordinate national resources to prevent attacks on the Persian Gulf islands and maintain control of the Strait of Hormuz.”
Zarif lived in New York when he was Iran’s ambassador to the UN. His children were born in the city and hold dual US citizenship. He has published several articles in Foreign Affairs [12] going back to 2014 when he wrote an appeal to the Obama Administration on Rouhani’s behalf entitled “What Iran Really Wants — Iranian Foreign Policy in the Rouhani Era”.
In the Russian file [5], Zarif claimed that Foreign Minister Lavrov and President Putin had conspired with General Qassem Soleimani in 2015 – before Trump assassinated him in 2020 – to block the terms endorsed by the US and Zarif of the nuclear-limiting Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The claim was false. The interpretation in Moscow was that Zarif was lying to benefit either his political allies in Teheran or in Washington, or both.
[13]Source: https://johnhelmer.net/mohammad-javad-zarifs-allegation-against-russia-is-false/ [5]
Zarif’s multi-point peace deal with Washington of last week offers [6] a nuclear fuel enrichment level capped at 3.67%; an international regime for “all [Iran’s] nuclear facilities under permanent international monitoring”; an international “fuel enrichment consortium [to which] Iran would transfer all its enriched material and equipment”; US-Iranian energy and other investments and “financing the reconstruction of damages caused by the wars in 2025 and 2026”; a non-aggression pact between the US and Iran; and a parallel “regional security arrangement” with the Gulf Arab sheikhdoms.
In return, Zarif proposes [6] the lifting of sanctions in return for the opening of the Strait of Hormuz. “American officials must permit the Strait of Hormuz to be open for Iran, too…although it borders [sic] Iranian territory, the strait has been effectively closed to Iran because of US sanctions.”
Zarif has ignored Israel in this plan. He omits any reference to the Russian and Chinese roles in Iran’s defence. He also ignores the defeat Iran’s drone and missile capacities have inflicted on the air defences of Israel, the Arab states, and the US bases; and the balance of deterrence which Iran is now approaching with Israel at the sub-nuclear munitions level. He has nothing to say about the future of US bases in the Gulf region.
He claims [6] that despite Trump’s “stone ages” threats, he can be persuaded by the political and economic costs. “The White House is clearly worried that rising energy costs, which were created by the American bombardment, are a political liability, and this plan would offer Trump a well-timed off-ramp. In fact, it could turn his huge miscalculation into an opportunity to claim a lasting victory for peace.”
NOTE: the poster in the left image has been reported by Iran International as having been seen at a Teheran demonstration on April 3, the day his article appeared in New York. The headline reads: “Death to the American Zarif”.