Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister and the chief negotiator of the 2015 nuclear deal, has recently returned to the American media spotlight, authoring an essay for the Atlantic and participating in a long public interview with Charlie Rose in New York. As ever, writes Armin Rosen, Zarif’s mission is to put a smiling face on the Islamic Republic and obscure its many crimes:

Zarif enjoys remarkable prestige in the U.S. It could be that he’s seen as a leading defender of an Obama legacy item, given the Trump administration’s disavowal of the Iran deal. Or maybe the explanation is simpler: Zarif speaks English beautifully, and writes in sophisticated-sounding bromides. He is a credulous listener’s idea of a foreign-policy whiz. . . .

Under pressure from the . . . sometimes-assertive Rose, Zarif said [in his interview that] “we have no proof” that the Assad regime, which owes its survival to Iranian military intervention, ever used chemical weapons. “We are in Syria not to support anyone but to fight Islamic State,” Zarif said—never mind that Islamic State didn’t really exist as a separate entity from al-Qaeda, a group Iran has often assisted, until February of 2014, several years into Tehran’s efforts to rescue Assad. “Our region needs the message of dialogue,” he said, neglecting to mention that over 500 Iranian troops have been killed
“dialoguing” in Syria. . . .

Like Zarif’s agnosticism as to whether the Holocaust actually happened, the most cringe-inducing parts of his [recent] talk hint at where his heart may actually lie: he is not just a defender of his regime’s policies, but a proudly transparent believer in its larger mission and meaning. Zarif has been widely viewed as an interlocutor between longstanding enemies, and has presented himself as such since the early 2000s. But he’s also spent decades working for the Islamic Republic, and he has an uncanny ability to deflect even the appearance of conflict [between his public persona and the government he represents]. . . .

Some are helpless to resist him, and commit public debasements at his feet. “We’re friends, you have to understand,” Charlie Rose said by way of backing down from a tense exchange over Iran’s role in Syria. “It doesn’t look that way, but it’s true!,” Zarif beamed, happy for this inexplicable off-ramp.

Addressing a recent meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Committee, Mahmoud Abbas criticized Hamas more sharply than he has previously (at least in public), calling them “sons of dogs.” The eighty-nine-year-old Palestinian Authority president urged the terrorist group to “stop the war of extermination in Gaza” and “hand over the American hostages.” The editors of the New York Sun comment:

Mr. Abbas has long been at odds with Hamas, which violently ousted his Fatah party from Gaza in 2007. The tone of today’s outburst, though, is new. Comparing rivals to canines, which Arabs consider dirty, is startling. Its motivation, though, was unrelated to the plight of the 59 remaining hostages, including 23 living ones. Instead, it was an attempt to use an opportune moment for reviving Abbas’s receding clout.

[W]hile Hamas’s popularity among Palestinians soared after its orgy of killing on October 7, 2023, it is now sinking. The terrorists are hoarding Gaza aid caches that Israel declines to replenish. As the war drags on, anti-Hamas protests rage across the Strip. Polls show that Hamas’s previously elevated support among West Bank Arabs is also down. Striking the iron while it’s hot, Abbas apparently longs to retake center stage. Can he?

Diminishing support for Hamas is yet to match the contempt Arabs feel toward Abbas himself. Hamas considers him irrelevant for what it calls “the resistance.”

[Meanwhile], Abbas is yet to condemn Hamas’s October 7 massacre. His recent announcement of ending alms for terror is a ruse.

Abbas, it’s worth noting, hasn’t saved all his epithets for Hamas. He also twice said of the Americans, “may their fathers be cursed.” Of course, after a long career of anti-Semitic incitement, Abbas can’t be expected to have a moral awakening. Nor is there much incentive for him to fake one. But, like the protests in Gaza, Abbas’s recent diatribe is a sign that Hamas is perceived as weak and that its stock is sinking.