That of course is not entirely inexplicable. The Iranian vice-president faces a challenge launched by a number of lawmakers at the Iranian Parliament that seeks to have him removed or obstructed from any position of strategic decision-making over the fact that at least one of Zarif’s children holds U.S. nationality.

According to Iranian law, individuals who hold foreign citizenship or whose immediate family members hold such citizenship cannot be assigned to sensitive posts in the Iranian government. While that has not stopped the Pezeshkian administration from keeping Zarif on board, pressure from political opponents has mounted on both the administration and Zarif himself.

Late last year, Iranian journalist Sara Masoumi posted a Persian-language message on her X account that said, without citing a source, that Zarif “plays no role in decision-making and enforcing decisions in the foreign policy area.”

The Pezeshkian administration has forwarded a bill to the Parliament to modify the law so that it accommodates the recruitment of individuals whose children did not acquire foreign nationality by choice, as in Zarif’s case.

The vice-president’s children were born in the United States while he was a student before being posted to Iran’s United Nations mission in New York. As such, the U.S. under its constitution considers them natural-born U.S. citizens. Regardless, both his children reside in Iran.

The dispute is yet to be resolved while modifying legislation remains in the works, and even as Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei is said to be in favor of the reform of the law.

Zarif, all the while, has kept mostly absent from the public eye in recent weeks. And after he departed Iran on Monday, January 20 for Davos, Switzerland to participate in the 2025 Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), and even though his agenda for the trip was pre-announced, rumors emerged that he might meet U.S. officials on the sidelines of the economic forum, which his office later rejected.

Has Iran’s ‘negotiator-in-chief’ been warming up?

Nevertheless, and given consternation among some Iranians about the return of Donald Trump to the presidency, Zarif’s absence from the public eye has raised speculation about whether the Iranian official has been less visible for a reason.

In his former capacity as Iran’s foreign minister, Zarif was Iran’s top negotiator in talks that led to a landmark deal between Iran and originally six world powers, from which Trump later withdrew.

In the course of the presidential election that Pezeshkian won, Zarif campaigned extensively for the then-candidate. And Pezeshkian’s choice of Zarif as his vice-president for strategic affairs was itself taken as a sign of how deeply the president valued his ideas.

Like Zarif, Pezeshkian himself has not dismissed the idea of negotiations with the United States. In an interview with major American network NBC, the Iranian president said Iran was ready for talks if it trusted that the U.S. would not once again renege on its obligations.

A source close to the Reformist faction anonymously told IRNA that while Zarif backed negotiations, “he is unlikely to be front and center of any talks” because of the limited but riotous opposition to the vice-president at the Parliament. He would however be “consulted by both [Foreign Minister Abbas] Araghchi and Pezeshkian if talks start,” the source said.

Araghchi, the current minister, was Zarif’s deputy during the previous talks that led to the deal. He is considered as friendly to the Principlist faction.

Still, and regardless of Zarif’s role, any direct or even indirect negotiations with the United States remain politically sensitive.

Could the pursuit of negotiations cost the Pezeshkian administration or Zarif politically? Back in 2015, and a few months after the nuclear deal had been signed, Zarif and the then-U.S. President Barack Obama ran into each other and shook hands at the United Nations headquarters in New York. According to Zarif, Obama told the Iranian official that he hoped the handshake would not cost him politically — something Zarif later lamented even had to be said about a simple handshake.

Zarif knew too well though that, for many, it was not just a simple handshake. And he knows Trump isn’t Obama.