Iran’s Hard-Liners Keep Their Criticism of Nuclear Pact to Themselves
By THOMAS ERDBRINK
Published: December 1, 2013
TEHRAN — In a room in which journalists were outnumbered by security agents and paramilitary fighters, the tall Iranian commander stood and issued his judgment.
“Our ideology will not be undermined by some negotiations,” Mohammad Reza Naqdi, the hard-line head of the paramilitary Basij force, told the selected group of reporters in a gathering days before Iran signed an interim nuclear agreement with the United States and other world powers.
That pact, in which Iran’s moderate government agreed to freeze parts of its nuclear program for six months in exchange for limited relief from crippling economic sanctions, was greeted with wild enthusiasm in most quarters here. A conspicuous exception, however, were Iran’s hard-liners, who mostly maintained a studied silence, unwilling to risk a public confrontation with their patron over the years — the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has cautiously welcomed the deal.
But that silence may not last, experts say. At the slightest signal from the supreme leader, they say, the hard-liners could unleash protests by hundreds of thousands on the streets along with an outpouring of criticism from state-run news media.
“They are biding their time,” watching from the sidelines, eager to pounce on any perceived signs of backtracking, weakness or capitulation, said Farshad Ghorbanpour, an Iranian journalist close to the government of President Hassan Rouhani. “When the opportunity arises they will strike back, searching for pretexts and playing into possible snags during the negotiations,” he said. “This is in no way a done deal.”
Iran and the United States face a host of obstacles on the treacherous path to a final agreement on Tehran’s nuclear program. A swarm of critics — Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States Congress, among others — have already condemned the deal (curiously enough, helping Mr. Rouhani by making the pact look better for Iran).
Perhaps none of those critics have as much at stake, however, as Iran’s hard-liners, whose very claim to power rests on implacable opposition to what they depict as the decadent, immoral West, and especially to the “Great Satan,” the United States.
For over a decade, Iran’s hard-line clerics and Revolutionary Guards commanders have controlled important levers of power — the military and intelligence services, the judiciary, state-run news media, Friday Prayer venues and a wide circle of state-run businesses. Working closely with Ayatollah Khamenei, they have enforced a worldview of confrontation with the West, sending the country lurching from crisis to crisis.
They prospered under the bombastic presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who made an art form of roiling Western sensibilities, particularly concerning Israel. On state television and during rallies, they tirelessly propagated the idea that Iran would eternally resist the West no matter the consequences. In the process, they grew richer and more powerful, even as the country was increasingly impoverished by the sanctions.
But as cheerful ordinary Iranians, particularly younger ones, welcomed the news of the nuclear deal as a first step toward a brighter future, the hard-liners went silent. Publicly, at least, they pretend as if nothing has happened, taking to the friendly airwaves of state-run news media to reiterate their rigid anti-Western ideology and assure the public that nothing will come of the negotiations.
“The Islamic Republic is fundamentally against the arrogance,” Mr. Naqdi said of the United States a day after the deal. “We will never reach a compromise with them.”
Some experts have said the hard-liners have been muted in their criticism because they are quietly pleased with the agreement, in that it concedes their fundamental, nonnegotiable demand that Iran be allowed to continue to enrich uranium. But equally, if not more, important is their relationship to Ayatollah Khamenei, without whose blessings no deal would have been possible.
A Tehran-based analyst with ties to the senior leadership, Amir Mohebbian, has said that Ayatollah Khamenei ushered Mr. Rouhani into power with the idea of shifting course from the Ahmadinejad years and testing President Obama’s sincerity about reaching a nuclear deal. Having now seen the ayatollah praise the nuclear deal “as it was presented to him” — a deliberate ambiguity that will enable him to shift course again, should he so decide — the hard-liners have been guarded in their remarks.
One theme that is emerging clearly from the hard-line camp is that Iran has already compromised as much as it can. “We have shown flexibility, now all sanctions should be lifted,” said Gen. Hossein Salami, a Revolutionary Guards commander. “Otherwise, the interim nuclear deal is a reversible path.”
“Be sure that Mr. Rouhani will come under lots of pressure inside Iran,” said Ahmad Bakhshayesh, a hard-line member of Parliament. “If sanctions are not fully lifted, this temporary deal can be canceled easily.”
On Wednesday, the Committee to Protect Iranian Interests, a hard-line group whose members pelted Mr. Rouhani with eggs, and even a shoe, after his September phone call with Mr. Obama, issued a statement saying much the same thing, that Iran’s negotiators “burned all our winning cards in the first phase.”
“This deal is like the one Iraq got: oil for food. We are giving a lot and are gaining a little,” said Ali Reza Matachi, a member of the group. “We reserve the right to protest against this agreement.”
In all likelihood, they will begin to protest only if given a signal by Ayatollah Khamenei or one of his surrogates in the news media or at the Friday Prayer venues. But that may not be forthcoming in the near future.
“He is leaving his options open and can always ask the hard-liners to step in if he doesn’t like the way the talks develop,” said one analyst who asked to remain anonymous in order to speak openly about the motives of the supreme leader. Few of Iran’s concessions in the temporary agreement with world powers are permanent, he noted. “If needed, everything can be restarted, nothing is being dismantled for now.”
But if they do receive such a signal, the hard-liners have the money and means to mobilize a formidable opposition.
“Through their networks the hard-liners have the ability to mobilize forces,” said Mr. Ghorbanpour, pointing to state-condoned rallies of hundreds of thousands of people. Mr. Rouhani will not be allowed to organize such gatherings, he said, as the organizations signing off on public events are all beyond his control.
For instance, Mr. Rouhani’s failure to unblock Facebook, a major promise during his campaign, illustrates the sway the hard-liners still exercise over the public domain. If the social media site were freely accessible in Iran, his supporters would use it as an open stage to organize and set demands, analysts say.
“Instead of being able to put political muscle on the streets, his only chance of survival is to improve the economy,” Mr. Ghorbanpour said of Mr. Rouhani.
But even there, the hard-liners play a critical role. “There is a group of nouveaux riches who found wealth in the sanctions,” said Saeed Laylaz, an economist with close ties to the Rouhani government. For years, the new Porsches, Maseratis and Ferraris snaking their way through the narrow alleys of upscale North Tehran were among the most visible effects of the sanctions.
The drivers of these luxury cars, mostly young men in their 20s, are commonly referred to here as “aghazadehs,” the children of those with connections to power.
According to Mr. Laylaz, “instead of trying to take their wealth, Mr. Rouhani will ask them to invest it into the economy.”
A shift of economic power to those close to Mr. Rouhani is possible, Mr. Laylaz insisted. “But don’t expect the U-turn towards transparency, enhancement of the private sector and the erosion of nepotism and corruption to happen in a very short time.”
The New York Times
