Kamal Kharazi

Sayyid Kamal Kharazi (Persian: کمال خرازی, born 1 December 1944) 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 was an advisor to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He is currently a member of the Expediency Discernment Council. 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.

On 1 April 2026, Iranian outlet Nournews reported that Kharazi was seriously injured and his wife was killed in a targeted U.S.-Israeli airstrike that hit his home in Tehran during the 2026 Iran war.

Kharazi was born in Tehran in 1944. He gained a BA in Arabic studies followed by a MEd from the University of Tehran. From 1975-76, he was a teaching fellow at the University of Houston, which awarded him a PhD in industrial psychology.

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 (from September 1980 to September 1988).

During the first months after the Iranian Revolution, Kharazi served as the Vice-President of Iranian National Television (March to August 1979) for the new Islamic state. He then served as the Vice-Minister for Political Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (from August 1979 to March 1980) and as the Managing Director of the Center for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (from August 1979 to July 1981). 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.

Kharazi was married and has two children. His wife was killed during the 2026 Iran War. His nephew, Sadegh Kharazi, is Iran's ambassador to Paris and played a key role in developing the so-called roadmap or 'Swiss memo'.

• Mohsen Kharrazi
• Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iran