Hours after meeting the American progressive, anti-war group Code Pink, Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, unexpectedly resigned his post. He made the announcement via an Instagram message Monday.
“I am apologizing to you for all the shortcomings … in the past years during my time as foreign minister. … I thank the Iranian nation and officials,” Zarif wrote in the Farsi-language post.
The Western-educated leader, who has repeatedly claimed no one in Iran is jailed for their opinions despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, was the regime’s top diplomat and its most frequent envoy to the West.
Code Pink is leading a “peace delegation” to Iran, according to the group. On Twitter, co-founder Medea Benjamin posted a photo of the friendly Code Pink delegation greeting a smiling Zarif.
Every day Iranians are starving, with about a third in absolute poverty — but Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin described in a blog post the rich breakfast she enjoyed before meeting Zarif: “I usually don’t write about breakfast, but the breakfast in this hotel is quite extraordinary—with items such as fresh honey you scoop out from the honeycomb, locally made red and green cheeses, fresh celery and carrots juices made from scratch in front of you, and about 20 different herbs you can pick out and combine for your custom-made tea.”
Zarif’s resignation came the same day Syrian leader Bashar Assad made his first trip to Iran since the Syrian civil war began in 2011. Assad met the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who expressed his solidarity with the “Resistance in Syria,” his term for Assad’s reign of terror in which he’s used chemical weapons on civilians to discourage dissent.
In Tehran today. @AnnWright46 and I met foreign minister Javad Zarif. pic.twitter.com/8OhWJgLQty
— Medea Benjamin (@medeabenjamin) February 24, 2019
Twitter and Instagram are banned in Iran.
