Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the foreign minister of Iran, was well-known for his ferocious anti-Israel feelings and mistrust of the West. He passed away in a helicopter crash with President Ebrahim Raisi.

Amir-Abdollahian, a conservative and professional diplomat with strong connections to the Revolutionary Guards, assumed the position after Raisi's election victory in 2021.

At the time, state-run media celebrated his backing of "the Axis of Resistance," a coalition of armed groups from all over the Middle East, aligned with Tehran and pitted against Israel, Tehran's worst enemy.

During Amir-Abdollahian's time as Iran's top diplomat, substantial diplomatic efforts were made to break Iran's isolation and counteract the negative effects of the US sanctions that were imposed because of Iran's controversial nuclear program.

In particular, he tried to build ties with the Islamic Republic's Arab neighbours, especially Saudi Arabia, the dominant Sunni Muslim nation in the area.

In March 2023, Tehran and Riyadh agreed to reopen their respective embassies and restore ties after a long rift in a historic agreement mediated by China.

Amir-Abdollahian was born in Damghan, a city east of Tehran in 1964. He was married and had two children.

He graduated from the University of Tehran in 1991 with a bachelor's degree in international relations. He went on to do master's and doctoral studies in the same field.

He served as a diplomat in the Iranian Foreign Service, positions that he held from 1997 to 2001 in Iraq and from 2007 to 2010 in Bahrain.

Amir-Abdollahian was the deputy foreign minister for Arab and African issues under the previous Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

After a 2015 agreement with Western nations fell apart in 2018 due to the US unilaterally withdrawing from the agreement under then-President Donald Trump, he was involved in attempts to reopen the negotiations on Iran's nuclear program.

However, the talks have come to a complete standstill.

CLOSE TO REVOLUTIONARY GUARDS

Amir-Abdollahian was well-known for his longstanding connections to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the military's ideological wing in Iran.

The ambassador had a close relationship with the renowned Qassem Soleimani, the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' external operations arm, who was assassinated in a US drone strike in Baghdad in 2020.

For his ability to negotiate, Amir-Abdollahian praised Soleimani as a "strategic genius" and referred to him as a "true diplomat" in an interview from June 2020.

Amir-Abdollahian supported Tehran's first-ever direct strike on sworn enemy Israel last month as regional tensions over the Gaza war escalated and violence attracted Iranian friends in the area.

The Iranian attack was a response to an earlier airstrike that destroyed Tehran's Damascus consulate and killed seven Revolutionary Guardsmen, two of whom were generals and was largely attributed to Israel.

The attack, according to Amir-Abdollahian, is "in the framework of legitimate defence and international law."

Later, he played down a claimed Israeli counterattack on the Iranian province of Isfahan, which is home to a significant nuclear plant, comparing it to a kid's game.