Why Aren’t We Asking Iran for More?

Last January, on a visit to Beirut, Lebanon, Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, laid a wreath of white flowers on the tomb of Imad Mughniyeh. Mughniyeh was a senior leader of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, and perhaps the most murderous terrorist leader in the world outside of Al Qaeda. In 2008, he was assassinated by agents from the C.I.A. and Mossad in a secret operation in Damascus.

Why would Zarif, Iran’s point man in the nuclear negotiations with the United States, pay homage to a Hezbollah terrorist? Most of the time, Zarif portrays himself as someone who identifies with the West. He speaks flawless English. He has a doctorate from the University of Denver. As Iran’s Ambassador to the United Nations, he lived in New York for five years. Zarif makes himself out to be, along with President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate among hard-liners—the West’s best hope for getting a nuclear deal.

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We can only speculate about why Zarif would visit Mughniyeh’s tomb. Perhaps he was ordered to. Perhaps he thought he needed to—that such a gesture would buy him credibility with the hard-liners back home. And perhaps he really wanted to—contrary to his image, he may endorse Mughniyeh’s bloodthirsty ways. Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former C.I.A. operative and a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and a skeptic about Obama’s approach to the negotiations, says that, based on his reading of Zarif’s memoirs, it’s probably the latter. “There is no way that the Supreme Leader would allow Zarif to be the lead negotiator in the nuclear discussions unless he had substantial confidence in his revolutionary loyalty,” he said.

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