Return of Iran's Strategic Council might constrain Rouhani
The revival of a foreign policy council could signal that Iran's supreme leader is attempting to temper ideas of warmer relations with the West, especially after the nuclear deal.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has revived the Strategic Council for Foreign Policy, a body he created in 2006 that has been largely dormant in recent years, in a possible effort to present a counterweight to some of President Hassan Rouhani’s pro-Western orientations.
A recent decree issued by Khamenei’s office, replacing three out of five council members and adding a sixth, gives prominence to former senior officials under former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, including Saeed Jalili, the former nuclear negotiator and the supreme leader’s representative to the National Security Council.
Ali Akbar Velayati was removed from the council and replaced by Jalili. Velayati was the longest-serving foreign minister in the history of the Islamic republic and Khamenei’s foreign policy adviser, as well as a critic of Jalili and Ahmadinejad.
Ali Shamkhani, a moderate military figure and former defense minister who is now head of Iran’s Supreme Council of National Security, was replaced on the Strategic Council by Ahmad Vahidi, a more conservative military figure with ties to the Principlist camp who served as defense minister under Ahmadinejad.
