Do we like them?

Do we like Abbas Araghchi?

Our score: 4 out of 10. He serves a state with a heavy human-rights record, but little in the pages we could read ties harmful words to him personally.

Abbas Araghchi is Iran's foreign minister, a career diplomat who has become the public face of Tehran's dealings with Washington. Right now he is being squeezed from inside his own system, because hardline MPs have moved to impeach him over his contact with US officials.

That impeachment push is the fresh bit. Euronews reported on 7 October that hardliners were moving against him over talks held around the UN General Assembly. It is a fight about how far Iran should talk to the US, not about anything he has done to people, so it tells you about Tehran's politics more than about his character.

On the nuclear file, The National reported in late January that he said no new nuclear talks with the US were on the table. That is a negotiating position from a diplomat doing his job, and where you land on it depends on whether you read it as hard bargaining or as stonewalling.

Now the harm check, with a gap. Iran's government has a documented record on LGBTQ+ people and women, and he speaks for it abroad. But the pages we could open this round didn't give us his own words or acts on those groups, and we won't put words in his mouth.

Good stuff is similarly thin in what we could read. He is a veteran negotiator who keeps being sent to the table, and talking instead of fighting counts for something. It's not the same as standing up for others at a cost to himself, and we found no evidence of that.

So the honest verdict is a shrug with a frown. We would not cheer for a minister serving a government with this human-rights record, but we can't pin harmful words on him personally from what we read. Check the fuller reporting before deciding.