Ahmadinejad replaces foreign minister with nuclear chief

IRANIAN PRESIDENT Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday summarily dismissed foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki and replaced him with top nuclear official Ali Akbar Salehi.

Analysts have suggested for some months that Mr Mottaki could be fired but the move came as a surprise as it coincided with an official visit to Senegal where the foreign minister presented a message from the Iranian president to his counterpart, Abdoulaye Wade. The two men have undertaken joint ventures in automobile manufacture and consult on foreign policy.

Mr Salehi, who was appointed nuclear energy chief in 2009, has been a major advocate of Iran’s development of an independent nuclear capacity. He declared early this month that the country was self-sufficient in the entire nuclear fuel cycle as it could mine and purify its own raw uranium and transform it into fuel. The country’s first reactor came on line last month.

In a brief letter published by Iran’s national news agency, the president thanked Mr Mottaki for his services and expressed the hope that his “efforts receive God’s praise”.

A graduate of an Indian university, fluent in English, Turkish and Urdu, Mr Mottaki is a career diplomat who assumed the post of foreign minister in August 2005. But he had been imposed on Mr Ahmadinejad, who had just been elected to his first term in office. Their relations became strained, particularly since the president likes to act as his own foreign minister.

Mr Mottaki is an adept politician, who was elected to the first post-revolutionary parliament in 1979, as well as a seasoned diplomat.

While analysts suggest his removal may have been motivated by the power struggle between different factions in the Iranian regime, he has also been subjected to severe criticism over his failure to prevent the ratcheting up of sanctions against Iran. These were due to its refusal to end uranium enrichment and halt its nuclear programme. Iran insists it seeks to develop nuclear energy for electricity but the West argues that it is seeking the expertise to build nuclear bombs.

Last week’s talks in Geneva between Tehran and five permanent members of the Security Council – the US, France, Britain, Russia, China and Germany – did not achieve a breakthrough but these powers have agreed to hold further discussions with Iran next month in Istanbul.

Therefore, the choice of Mr Salehi, a technocrat loyal to Mr Ahmadinejad, to caretake the foreign ministry could be significant, although Mr Mottaki is fully committed to the nuclear programme which, according to a recent poll, is backed by 77 per cent of Iranians.

Commenting on Mr Mottaki’s replacement, German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle said: “We trust that the talks that have just begun . . . will continue and that different political line-ups will not lead to an interruption or [any] hesitation at those talks.”