Zarif’s Beefs
Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, is used to giving interviews. In his almost eight years in the job, he’s spoken to hundreds of journalists from around the world, putting forward Tehran’s case, quite often in fluent English. But on Feb. 24, he sat down with the Iranian economist Saeed Leylaz for a different sort of exchange.
Organized by the Center for Strategic Studies, a think tank run by the office of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, the interview was part of an oral history project meant to give Iran’s cabinet ministers space to speak candidly for posterity. These interviews were meant to be edited and published months, if not years, later — only after classified material was scrubbed from the record. Or so it seemed.