The election of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was bound to bring about a number of changes not just within top cabinet positions, but lower-level jobs as well. One exception, some had hoped, would be continuity with the staff of nuclear negotiators. That hope may have been dashed with the replacement of pragmatic Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi with hard-liner Ali Bagheri Kani, according to a recent Foreign Ministry statement.  

Bagheri Kani was a former leading nuclear negotiator during Saeed Jalili’s tenure as the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. At that time, the nuclear negotiations were under the SNSC. Under President Hassan Rouhani, the file was moved to the foreign ministry under Mohammad Javad Zarif. The current nuclear negotiations to bring the United States back into the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — and Iran back into full compliance with the deal — were being led by Araghchi in Vienna. All sides are still waiting to resume another round of those talks.

Some analysts hope that Araghchi, while no longer deputy foreign minister, will still continue to play a central role in the negotiations. But those hopes seem unlikely. The nuclear file is essentially back under the guidance of the SNSC and closely supervised by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. 

Bagheri Kani also has some interesting family connections. His brother is married to Khamanei’s daughter, and his uncle was Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani, a Shiite cleric who held a number of important positions within the Islamic Republic.