After the revolution, Mottaki was elected as the first parliament representative and assigned by other representatives as the head of the national security and foreign policy committee due to his politic and diplomatic talents. During his years in Majlis (Congress) and effective collaboration with the foreign ministry, he was employed by the ministry after parliament. He served as the member of parliament in the first Majlis, head of the 7th political bureau of foreign ministry (1984), Iran's ambassador to Turkey (1985), ministry's secretary general for Western European affairs (1989), deputy foreign minister for international affairs (1989) and deputy foreign minister for legal, consular and parliamentary affairs (1992). He was also Iran's ambassador to Japan (1994), On 24 August 2005, Mottaki was appointed foreign minister after
the Majlis approved him as minister with 220 votes in favor. He was also appointed foreign minister to the second cabinet of Ahmadinejad in 2009. His term ended on 13 December 2010 when he was dismissed, something that had been widely speculated as a power struggle within the conservative establishment. Mottaki said, "Dismissing a minister during a mission is un-Islamic, undiplomatic and offensive."
IRIB reported that
Ali Akbar Salehi would replace Mottaki in a caretaker position. Commenting on Mottaki's dismissal, U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton said the U.S. relationship with Iran "is not toward any individual . . . it is toward the country, the government, which is complex and challenging to deal with". On 27 February 2012, he announced his nomination for the
2013 presidential election. He was supported by
Front of Followers of the Line of the Imam and the Leader, which the party later changed its presidential candidate from Mottaki to
Mohammad-Hassan Aboutorabi Fard. He registered as a presidential candidate in the first day of nomination in the
Ministry of Interior. However, it was reported that Mottaki's nomination will be rejected by
Guardian Council. He withdrew from his nomination and suspended his presidential campaign just hours before the council's announcement of final candidates.
Views Referring to the controversy over
Iran's nuclear program, Mottaki said the referral of the issue to the UN Security Council would be a detrimental move. He called for negotiations and said Iran does not seek nuclear weapons, and instead wants the same rights as other members of the
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. In July, 2010, in one report from the International Foreign Ministerial Meeting in
Kabul, "
American,
European and other foreign leaders [including] ... Mottaki ... and
Pakistan's Foreign Minister
Shah Mehmood Qureshi [and]
Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon met ... to pledge anew their support for
Afghanistan as they committed to complete transition of security and budgeting responsibility to the Afghan government by 2014. They acknowledged that neither the people of their own countries nor those in Afghanistan had much patience left. ... The Iranian Foreign Minister used the conference as an opportunity to get in some digs at the foreign forces. The criticism came just a few weeks after the
United Nations Security Council voted to enforce sanctions against Iran for failing to halt its nuclear program. 'The presence and increase in the number of foreign forces is one of the factors in the insecurity, violence and dissatisfaction of the public,' said ... Mottaki .... A moment later the United Nations special representative to Afghanistan,
Staffan de Mistura, interrupted and told him to get to the point." Another report from Kabul added "Mottaki accused the U.S., Pakistan and allied forces of utilizing Afghanistan to support terrorist strikes inside Iran, including last week's
bomb blasts in ... Zahedan, ...
Sistan-Baluchistan province." This report said
United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "hadn't heard [the] comments ... charging the U.S. with supporting terrorism inside Iran"; and said that "Mottaki exceeded his allotted time giving his speech, earning a rebuke from the conference's organizers. The Iranian diplomat said he had the right to give an extended account of the situation in Afghanistan, as Iran has been forced to absorb three million Afghans evading the fighting in their country." A third report said, in part, that Mottaki said "Increase in terrorism because of the active support of the US and NATO of terrorist groups in the region as part of their policy to sow ethnic and religious discord, is proof of the fact that the undesirable presence of the occupation forces has intensified insecurity and violence. Today, insecurity is not just plaguing the Afghan people but is in fact directly mushrooming in neighbouring states, especially in Pakistan." Mottaki defended the
International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust as a "gathering of truth-seekers". He also claimed that "there has never been such a phenomenon as
Antisemitism" in the
Muslim world. ==Honors==