Little noticed in the flurry of high profile diplomacy that produced a breakthrough nuclear accord in Geneva last month, Ali Akbar Velayati, the longtime top foreign policy advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and former Iranian foreign minister, has been appointed the head of the Center for Strategic Research, the Iranian think tank formerly helmed by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

Velayati was tapped to succeed Rouhani as head of the Center for Strategic Research, a subsidiary of Iran’s Expediency Council, in November, IRNA reported.

Velayati, who did post-graduate medical studies at Johns Hopkins University, served as Iranian foreign minister from 1981-1997 and as Khamenei’s top foreign policy advisor since then. He has appointed Dr. Abbas Maleki, a former Iranian diplomat and scholar, as his deputy of international studies at CSR, Iranian sources told Al-Monitor Sunday.

Maleki, who served as Iran’s deputy foreign minister under Velayati from 1980-1997 and as a professor and dean at Sharif University, has in recent years been based in Boston as a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2011-2012) before his return to Iran in 2012.