Pages: 16-27

Abstract

Mohammad Javad Zarif is undoubtedly is one of the most prominent and influential members of the government of Hassan Rouhani (2013-17) and one of the most high profile figures of the media in recent years. He is an experienced diplomat who succeeded to bring several years of negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 to fruition by sealing JCPOA on 14 July 2015. But after the end of early celebrations of the parties, a discourse cleavage gradually emerged between the parties and got deepened. Western states, i.e. USA and EU led by US, not only did not implement the JCPOA and merely reduced it to a legal document, rather tied its implementation to other issues like missile power and Iran’s policy in the Middle East. On the other hand, Iranian government in general and the foreign minister of Iran revised their previous idealist discourse and neared themselves to semi-realists of Iran in their stances and put the pessimistic tone and language in the agenda and started to criticize the western counterparts. The current essay seeks to study the process of discourse shift of Iran and this Iranian diplomat.