Can Iran keep the foreign minister its parliament wants gone?

On September 1, Abbas Araghchi stood at a summit in Bishkek and shook hands with the Russian and Chinese foreign ministers on the sidelines. Seven weeks earlier, a crowd at the former supreme leader's funeral threw rocks at him and called him a sellout.

Polymarket's Araghchi out market prices the "distance" between those two sides of the same coin. Will Araghchi keep his position, or will he resign? Losing the job by December 31 costs 15 cents and pays 567%.

According to Polymarket rules, 'Yes' resolves if Araghchi stops being foreign minister for any period at all, and an announcement of a resignation or a removal settles it on the spot. What happens to that announcement afterward makes no difference.

In February 2019, Mohammad Javad Zarif posted his resignation on Instagram after being left out of a visit by the president of Syria. Iran’s President at the time, Hassan Rouhani, refused it in writing two days later. Zarif went back to his office, and he served another 2.5 years.

However, Araghchi has more reasons to resign than Zarif did. In April, Iran International reported that President Pezeshkian and the speaker of parliament both wanted him replaced. On top of that, on August 4, a member of parliament said lawmakers were gathering evidence to impeach him for failing to make the United States accept Iran's terms. If that wasn't enough, hardline outlets have now taken to calling him the minister of the Kharijites, a highly derogatory label framing him as a dangerous extremist and religious deviant who has split from the mainstream Islamic community.

So the likeliest single outcome is that Araghchi isn't Iran's foreign minister at New Year. 15 cents is also quite lucrative risk-reward-wise, as a trader risks $1 to make 6.67$.