Iran ex-foreign minister, who was leading US talks, critical after murder bid

A former Iranian foreign minister, who was reportedly helping facilitate direct peace talks between Iran and the US, was severely wounded in an airstrike on Wednesday.

While the attack left 81-year-old Kamal Kharazi – the current head of the Strategic Council on Foreign Relations – it claimed the life of his wife, Iranian media outlets reported. The strike reportedly hit his home in Tehran. It wasn’t clear if the airstrikes targeted Kharazi or another site nearby, the Associated Press (AP) noted.

According to officials cited by the New York Times (NYT), he was helping facilitate a potential meeting between Iranian authorities and US Vice President JD Vance.

Kharazi's political credentials include his stint as Iran's foreign minister under Mohammad Khatami, a reformist president.

He then served as a foreign affairs adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the joint US-Israeli strikes that triggered the current war.

In 2022, Kharazi told Al Jazeera that Tehran has "the technical means to produce a nuclear bomb but there has been no decision by Iran to build one." The remark had sparked international concerns about Iran's intentions.

After the ongoing war began, he told CNN: "I don't see any room for diplomacy anymore. Because [US President] Donald Trump had been deceiving others and not keeping with his promises, and we experienced this in two times of negotiations — that while we were engaged in negotiation, they struck us."

Nicole Grajewski, a renowned international affairs expert on Iran and an Assistant Professor at the Centre de recherches internationales (CERI), Sciences Po, said that Kharazi has influence spanning clerical circles in the Iranian seminary city of Qom and also the supposedly moderate fractions of the Islamic Republic.

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(With inputs from agencies)