Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif resigns

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif resigned Monday, but it's unclear if his superiors, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would accept his resignation.

Zarif is an architect and defender of the Iran nuclear deal, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and his departure would be viewed as a serious blow to the pact, which has been shaken by U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to unilaterally withdraw from it.

Zarif announced his departure in a post on Instagram, the authenticity of which was confirmed by the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), which quoted a deputy spokesman for the foreign affairs ministry, Seyyed Abbas Mousavi.

But INRA also rejected reports that President Hassan Rouhani had accepted Zarif’s resignation, suggesting it was still unclear whether he would actually leave his post.

The BBC’s chief international corespondent, Lyse Doucet, who interviewed Zarif in a feisty exchange that was a highlight of his year’s Munich Security Conference, speculated Zarif’s resignation could be a tactic and may have been tied to his exclusion from a meeting in Tehran Monday between Khamenei and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Doucet, writing for the BBC, noted Zarif’s efforts to save the JCPOA, but added “he’s under huge pressure from hardliners who never liked or trusted his negotiations with the West.”

Responding to the news of Zarif's resignation, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted "good riddance."