( CNN ) If you 've been following the news lately , there are certain things you doubtless know about Mohammad Javad Zarif . He is , of course , the Iranian foreign minister . He has been U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry 's opposite number in securing a breakthrough in nuclear discussions that could lead to an end to sanctions against Iran -- if the details can be worked out in the coming weeks . And he received a hero 's welcome as he arrived in Iran on a sunny Friday morning . `` Long live Zarif , '' crowds chanted as his car rolled slowly down the packed street . You may well have read that he is `` polished '' and , unusually for one burdened with such weighty issues , `` jovial . '' An Internet search for `` Mohammad Javad Zarif '' and `` jovial '' yields thousands of results . He certainly has gone a long way to bring Iran in from the cold and allow it to rejoin the international community . But there are some facts about Zarif that are less well-known . Here are six : . In September 2013 , Zarif tweeted `` Happy Rosh Hashanah , '' referring to the Jewish New Year . That prompted Christine Pelosi , the daughter of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi , to respond with a tweet of her own : `` Thanks . The New Year would be even sweeter if you would end Iran 's Holocaust denial , sir . '' And , perhaps to her surprise , Pelosi got a response . `` Iran never denied it , '' Zarif tweeted back . `` The man who was perceived to be denying it is now gone . Happy New Year . '' The reference was likely to former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad , who had left office the previous month . Zarif was nominated to be foreign minister by Ahmadinejad 's successor , Hassan Rouhami . His foreign ministry notes , perhaps defensively , that `` due to the political and security conditions of the time , he decided to continue his education in the United States . '' That is another way of saying that he was outside the country during the demonstrations against the Shah of Iran , which began in 1977 , and during the Iranian Revolution , which drove the shah from power in 1979 . Zarif left the country in 1977 , received his undergraduate degree from San Francisco State University in 1981 , his master 's in international relations from the University of Denver in 1984 and his doctorate from the University of Denver in 1988 . Both of his children were born in the United States . The website of the Iranian Foreign Ministry , which Zarif runs , can not even agree with itself on when he was born . The first sentence of his official biography , perhaps in a nod to the powers that be in Tehran , says Zarif was `` born to a religious traditional family in Tehran in 1959 . '' Later on the same page , however , his date of birth is listed as January 8 , 1960 . And the Iranian Diplomacy website says he was born in in 1961 . So he is 54 , 55 or maybe even 56 . Whichever , he is still considerably younger than his opposite number , Kerry , who is 71 . The feds investigated him over his alleged role in controlling the Alavi Foundation , a charitable organization . The U.S. Justice Department said the organization was secretly run on behalf of the Iranian government to launder money and get around U.S. sanctions . But last year , a settlement in the case , under which the foundation agreed to give a 36-story building in Manhattan along with other properties to the U.S. government , did not mention Zarif 's name . Early in the Iranian Revolution , Zarif was among the students who took over the Iranian Consulate in San Francisco . The aim , says the website Iranian.com -- which cites Zarif 's memoirs , titled `` Mr . Ambassador '' -- was to expel from the consulate people who were not sufficiently Islamic . Later , the website says , Zarif went to make a similar protest at the Iranian mission to the United Nations . In response , the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations offered him a job . In fact , he has now spent more time with Kerry than any other foreign minister in the world . And that amount of quality time will only increase as the two men , with help from other foreign ministers as well , try to meet a June 30 deadline for nailing down the details of the agreement they managed to outline this week in Switzerland .
Mohammad Javad Zarif has spent more time with John Kerry than any other foreign minister . He once participated in a takeover of the Iranian Consulate in San Francisco . The Iranian foreign minister tweets in English .