باقر اسدی

Dr. Mohammad Javad Zarif, former Iranian Ambassador/Permanent Representative to the United Nations (New York), is now the Foreign Minister, and quite a celebrity, inside the country and at the international level. Mr. Ambassador: Conversation with Mohammd Javad Zarif – Former Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations is a book written by Mohammad Mehdi Raji, and is a product of more than 40 hours of exchange. Zarif’s detailed and patient replies to the interviewer’s numerous questions, portrays a good picture of the personality, line of thinking, the ever-present smile and even frequent hearty laughs. “Mr. Ambassador” contains a rich litany of substantial material in a number of fields and at several levels. At the most rudimentary level, it lays out the life journey of Javad Zarif, and in deeper levels, it focuses on his multilateralism.  Zarif’s objective and candid is extremely educational. For sure he is a go-getter, you may disagree with him, but he is a man to respect and even love; a man for all seasons for Iranian diplomacy in an age of the supremacy of individual-collective human failings and even sheer lunacy. This article reviews the book Mr. Ambassador on a more personal level, and gives deeper insights both on the narrative, and on Javad Zarif’s real life.