(20. Oktober) He is a practical, moderate voice that succeeded Saeed Jalili, an austere hardline ideologue who was, by the end of his term at the SNSC, ridiculed as a novice with a faint notion of the ways of international diplomacy. Even Ayatollah Khamenei’s chief foreign-policy advisor, Ali Akbar Velayati, publicly scolded Jalili for his diplomatic ineptitude that was deemed to only have exacerbated Tehran’s international troubles.