Kamal Kharazi
Sayyid Kamal Kharazi is an Iranian reformist politician and diplomat who served as the foreign minister of Iran from 20 August 1997 to 24 August 2005.
He was replaced by Manouchehr Mottaki who was appointed by the next President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He is currently member of the Expediency Discernment Council and advisor to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He is the chairman of the Strategic Council on Foreign Relations. He also founded Institute for Cognitive Science Studies along with other prominent Iranian psychologists in 2016.
Early life and education
Kharazi was born in Tehran in 1944. He got his Bachelor degree in Arabic language and literature, and after receiving his master's degree in education at the University of Tehran, he spent a year as teaching fellow at the University of Houston, where he received a PhD in industrial psychology.Career
Kharazi has been a Professor of Management and Educational Psychology at Tehran University since 1983. Kharazi was a founding member of the Islamic Research Institute in London.Kharazi has held a number of governmental, diplomatic and academic posts and headed Iranian delegations at numerous international conferences, most importantly at the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. For several years Kharazi presented the official Iranian position on TV and at university campuses in the United States and Europe, and has written extensively on foreign policy issues. He had extensive experience in guiding the media during the early days of Iran's Iranian Revolution.
From July 1980 to September 1989, he was the President of the Islamic Republic News Agency. On 18 September 1980, the Iran–Iraq War broke out, and Kharazi served as a member of the Supreme Defense Council of Iran and headed the War Information Headquarters and served as a military spokesman for most of the war.
During the first months after the Iranian Revolution, Kharazi served as the Vice-President of Iranian National Television for the new Islamic state. He then served as the Vice-Minister for Political Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and as the Managing Director of the Center for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults.
Previously, he represented Iran at the United Nations from 1989 to 1997.
In 2006, Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei created the Foreign Relations Steering Council and appointed Kharazi as Chairman.
In 2015, Kharazi was condemned for questioning Bahrain’s Arab identity, statements which were considered disrespectful by members of Bahrain’s Council of Representatives and Foreign Affairs Committee, who stated his remarks were a violation of international law.
In May 2023, Kharazi was the opening speaker at an Iranian-Arab dialogue conference in Doha, Qatar.