His term ended on 13 December 2010 when he was dismissed, something that had been widely speculated as a power struggle within the conservative establishment. Mottaki said, "Dismissing a minister during a mission is un-Islamic, undiplomatic and offensive." IRIB reported that Ali Akbar Salehi would replace Mottaki in a caretaker position. Commenting on Mottaki's dismissal, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.S. relationship with Iran “is not toward any individual . . . it is toward the country, the government, which is complex and challenging to deal with.” On 27 February 2012, he announced his nomination for the 2013 presidential election. He was supported by Front of Followers of the Line of the Imam and the Leader, which the party later changed its presidential candidate from Mottaki to Mohammad-Hassan Aboutorabi Fard. He registered as a presidential candidate in the first day of nomination in the Ministry of Interior. However, it was reported that Mottaki's nomination will be rejected by Guardian Council. He withdrew from his nomination and suspended his presidential campaign just hours before the council's announcement of final candidates. Referring to the controversy over Iran's nuclear program, Mottaki said the referral of the issue to the UN Security Council would be a detrimental move. He called for negotiations and said Iran does not seek nuclear weapons, and instead wants the same rights as other members of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Mottaki condemned the outcry over President Ahmadinejad's comments on Israel, calling them a "misunderstanding." At the same time, he called the Israeli government a "Zionist regime" and said of Israel that Iran was "facing a mad people, which is ruled by madmen." In July, 2010, in one report from the International Foreign Ministerial Meeting in Kabul, "American, European and other foreign leaders  [including] ... Mottaki ... and Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi [and] Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-Moon met ... to pledge anew their support for Afghanistan as they committed to complete transition of security and budgeting responsibility to the Afghan government by 2014. They acknowledged that neither the people of their own countries nor those in Afghanistan had much patience left. ... The Iranian Foreign Minister used the conference as an opportunity to get in some digs at the foreign forces. The criticism came just a few weeks after the United Nations Security Council voted to enforce sanctions against Iran for failing to halt its nuclear program.