23 July 2013, it was reported that Zarif was Rouhani's choice for minister of foreign affairs. This was not confirmed by the president-elect's office until 4 August when Rouhani officially nominated Zarif for the position to the Iranian Parliament. He was confirmed by the parliament with 232 votes, replacing Ali Akbar Salehi in the position. Zarif welcomed the first visit by a foreign leader to Iran since Rouhani assumed the presidency ten days after his approval as Foreign Minister with the arrival of Oman's sultan, Qaboos bin Said Al Said. Stories spread that there was a secret agenda to his meetings with Iranian officials, involving claims that he came to convey messages from the United States and then to relay Iran's response to White House officials. On 5 September 2013, in an exchange prompted by his Rosh Hashanah greeting on Twitter, Zarif said that Iran does not deny the Holocaust, distancing the government from the often belligerent stances by former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Genuineness of Zarif's tweeting in English was confirmed by CNN's Christiane Amanpour. On 27 September 2013, he met with United States Secretary of State John Kerry during P5+1 and Iran summit. It was the highest-level direct contact between the United States and Iran in the last six years. After the meeting, Kerry said that "We had a constructive meeting, and I think all of us were pleased that Foreign Minister Zarif came and made a presentation to us, which was very different in tone and very different in the vision that he held out with respect to possibilities of the future." After the breakup of talks on 12 November, Zarif rejected Kerry's claim that Iran had been unable to accept the deal "at that particular moment". He said "no amount of spinning" could change what had happened in Geneva, but it could "further erode confidence". Zarif appeared to blame France for "gutting over half" of a US draft deal. Representatives from Iran and the so-called P5+1 – met again on 20 November. Talks between senior American, Iranian and European diplomats in October 2014 produced no breakthrough agreement on curbing Iran's nuclear program, but officials said they still aimed to reach a deal by the 24 November deadline. A senior State Department official characterized each step of progress in the talks as "chipping away" at complex, technical differences, with virtually every sentence requiring an appendix of further explanation.