Saeed Khatibzadeh

Saeed Khatibzadeh is an Iranian diplomat who served as spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2020 to 2021 and was appointed head of the Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS) in January 2025. While stationed in Berlin in 2014, Khatibzadeh conceived and organised the Iran Experts Initiative, a covert Foreign Ministry influence operation that recruited Western-based Iranian academics to promote Tehran's nuclear negotiating positions. In a March 2014 email to IPIS head Mostafa Zahrani, he proposed building a network of 'second-generation Iranians' affiliated with Western think tanks and offered them 'political support.' He recruited Ariane Tabatabai and Dina Esfandiary as the core group following a meeting in Prague. In April 2015, he reported the IEI's media metrics to Mohammad Javad Zarif and the negotiating team. The operation was exposed when leaked emails were published by Iran International and Semafor in September 2023.