As Iran\u2019s foreign minister, he shuttles between Islamabad, Muscat and Saint Petersburg<\/a> carrying messages from a new supreme leader who has not appeared on camera since assuming power.<\/p>\n Ali Vaez, an Iran expert at the Crisis Group think tank, said: \u201cAraghchi has long understood that Iranian diplomacy is never conducted in a vacuum \u2013 it must constantly answer to the pressures, suspicions, and red lines of politics at home.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr Araghchi, 63, embodies Iran\u2019s essential contradiction: he is the regime\u2019s most experienced dealmaker trying to end a war, but his hands are tied by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) generals who have the final say over his negotiating mandate.<\/p>\n \u201cI was trained as a diplomat not to interfere in domestic politics and to consider only national interests and the Islamic Republic\u2019s welfare,\u201d Mr Araghchi wrote in his memoir, recounting battles with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran\u2019s president from 2005 to 2013. \u201cBut the president had a different view.\u201d<\/p>\n That tension \u2013 between professional diplomacy and factional warfare \u2013 has defined Mr Araghchi\u2019s nearly 40-year career and now threatens to doom his most consequential mission<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mr Araghchi joined the IRGC in 1979 after graduating from high school, fought in the Iran-Iraq war, then moved into diplomacy. He still keeps his combat uniform.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter 1989 when I entered the foreign ministry, I formally left the IRGC but not in my heart,\u201d he told an Iranian magazine in 2015. \u201cMy heart is still there.\u201d<\/p>\n That dual identity \u2013 revolutionary fighter turned Western-educated diplomat \u2013 mirrors Iran\u2019s own paradox and may explain why he survived two purges that sidelined other pragmatists.<\/p>\n The first came under Mr Ahmadinejad.<\/p>\n When Ali Larijani<\/a> resigned as nuclear negotiator in 2007 over clashes with the president, Mr Ahmadinejad demanded a complete team change.<\/p>\n \u201cMr Ahmadinejad explicitly told Mr Mottaki: Put Araghchi aside,\u201d Mr Araghchi wrote, referring to Manouchehr Mottaki, the former foreign minister.<\/p>\n Exiled to the embassy in Tokyo, he felt \u201clike a player the coach pulls from the field mid-game for no reason\u201d.<\/p>\n The second purge followed Ebrahim Raisi\u2019s 2021 election, when hardliners who denounced the 2015 nuclear deal<\/a> took power.<\/p>\n Mr Araghchi was moved to the Strategic Council on Foreign Relations \u2013 technically a demotion, practically exile.<\/p>\n Yet both times, Iran eventually needed what Mr Ahmadinejad\u2019s circle and Mr Raisi\u2019s government lacked: institutional memory of high-stakes negotiations and personal relationships with Western counterparts that took years to build.<\/p>\n Abbas Araghchi has survived two hardliner purges that sidelined other pragmatists<\/p>\n Mr Araghchi\u2019s finest professional hour came at the luxury Palais Coburg hotel in Vienna, not as lead negotiator but as the indispensable deputy to foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.<\/p>\n While Mr Zarif provided strategic vision and political cover for the nuclear talks, Mr Araghchi handled technical details across marathon sessions.<\/p>\n Wendy Sherman, his US counterpart, later recounted how previous Iranian negotiating teams refused to speak English, forcing all communication through translators.<\/p>\n When Mr Araghchi\u2019s team arrived under Hassan Rouhani<\/a> \u2013 who succeeded Mr Ahmadinejad as president in 2013 \u2013 this all changed.<\/p>\n The two developed an unusual rapport. Both became grandparents during the negotiations and exchanged baby photos.<\/p>\n But Mr Araghchi\u2019s assessment of the deal he helped craft revealed the painful compromises it required.<\/p>\n In a leaked 2015 briefing to state media managers, he called Iran\u2019s nuclear programme an \u201ceconomic loss\u201d justified only by \u201cdignity, independence and progress\u201d.<\/p>\n Now Mr Araghchi faces negotiations under conditions that make the 2015 talks look simple.<\/p>\n Back then, the foreign ministry controlled the process and Mr Rouhani\u2019s political coalition backed the effort.<\/p>\n Today, Tehran seems unable to agree on who talks, what\u2019s on the table, or whether to talk at all.<\/p>\n Donald Trump<\/a> extended the ceasefire last week after both delegations failed to show up in Islamabad, calling Iran \u201cseriously fractured\u201d and needing time to develop a \u201cunified proposal\u201d.<\/p>\n Hardliners insist nuclear issues should never have been discussed. Moderates want a deal to avoid the destruction of Iran. Legislators say they have been kept in the dark.<\/p>\n The political and diplomatic architects of the 2015 deal are now condemned as traitors by hardliners. Attendees at Quds Day rallies last month chanted \u201cdeath to compromisers\u201d while Mr Araghchi was giving an interview.<\/p>\n Mohammad Marandi, a negotiating team member, said Mr Araghchi \u201cwill have no negotiations with the Trump regime\u201d the same day Mr Araghchi told reporters he had conveyed Iran\u2019s positions to Pakistan.<\/p>\n Mahmoud Nabavian, a member of parliament on the negotiating team, said it was a \u201cstrategic error\u201d to include the nuclear issue on the agenda, which would embolden US demands for uranium export or a 20-year enrichment suspension.<\/p>\n Yet Ahmad Alamolhoda, the Mashhad Friday prayer leader, insisted \u201cno one talks about agreement with America\u201d.<\/p>\n It explained Mr Araghchi\u2019s Saint Petersburg mission on Tuesday.<\/p>\n![\"Abbas](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/70b0d982c6d33367a95cbd1c9d4e4d4c.jpeg\"\/)
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