Ishaq Shahryar (born 1936) was the Afghanistani ambassador to the United States from 2002 to 2003. Shahryar who was born in a Tajik family of kizilbash decent, came to the United States in 1956 to study, worked as a solar engineer for aerospace companies, and later founded and ran two solar-energy companies in the Los Angeles area. He became a U.S. citizen but had to revoke that citizenship to take the ambassadorship. A longtime associate of former Afghanistani King Mohammad Zahir Shah, Shahryar represented the government of Hamid Karzai, who became Afghanistan's new president in the summer of 2002. In November of 2003, Karzai was asked to meet with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during his visit to Washington. As a result of confusion and poor planning, the meeting was scheduled as a public testimony instead of the closed-door format more typical for meetings with foreign heads of state. Karzai is rumored to have blamed Shahryar for the incident. Several weeks after this incident, on December 4, 2003, Shahryar was replaced by Said Jawad. Shahryar also has two children: a daughter, Jahan and a son, Alexander.
