The View from Tehran

Tehran is full of anticipation as the June 30 deadline for a nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 approaches. But to say that the two main political factions in the Islamic Republic – the moderates and the hardliners – share the same assessment about the possibility for a final deal and its utility for Iran is to gloss over a more fundamental schism within the Islamic Republic about the future international identity of the country and its relations with the United States in particular.

Hardline Faction

The moderate government of President Hassan Rouhani was quick to hail the April 2 interim agreement reached in Lausanne as a major stride toward Tehran’s return to the global mainstream. That was, after all, Rouhani’s key promise in his 2013 election campaign, most lucidly revealed to the world in his speech at the World Economic Forum at Davos in January 2014.

“New cooperation with the world, both in the nuclear sphere and other areas, will open a new page,” Rouhani assured an anxious Iranian populace after the Lausanne agreement was announced.

As he has done from the outset in his presidency, Rouhani made sure he attributed the agreement to the policies and support of Iran’s top political authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Rouhani, fully aware that his political agenda is beholden to the goodwill of the supreme leader, publicly congratulated Khamenei for the deal in a clear attempt to tie the leader to the diplomatic breakthrough.

But Khamenei was having none of it. Within a week he issued a not-so-subtle rebuke and said it was premature to congratulate him when nothing had, in fact, been achieved. “I am neither for or against the [Lausanne] framework,” he said. Khamenei made sure he was clear in that, for him, swift sanctions relief is the only barometer for success as the talks continue.

The supreme leader’s reprimand has since set the tone for hardliners who have from the beginning been critical of Rouhani’s nuclear agenda and doubtful about his team’s negotiating tactics with the P5+1, specifically their overtures toward the Americans. Kayhan, a hardline paper whose chief editor is hand picked by Khamenei, came out with a forceful denunciation. Kayhan’s editor, Hossein Shariatmadari, was quite brusque. In Lausanne, Rouhani’s team had swapped a “ready-to-race horse with a broken bridle,” he charged.

For hardliners in Tehran, the Lausanne interim agreement has become increasingly unpalatable. First, within hours of the Lausanne announcement a feud broke out between Tehran and Washington about what had, in fact, been agreed upon. The Iranian negotiating team, led by Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, who on his return from Lausanne was welcomed in Tehran as a national hero by his supporters, insisted that nuclear-related sanctions on Iran would be suspended or removed as soon as a permanent deal was signed and Iran fulfilled its part of the bargain. The American side insisted the agreement was did not include a sudden removal of sanctions but instead a gradual phase-out which would occur in conjunction with Tehran’s adherence to the fulfillment of the deal. A phase-out was always going to be controversial. Khamenei had made it clear he was against providing immediate nuclear concessions only to secure a promise of sanctions relief at some future point.

The hardliners in Tehran quickly decided that the American side was more likely to speak the truth, an inclination that was strengthened when the Rouhani government refused to publish the agreed “Fact Sheet” from Lausanne. The  controversy and questions over the substance of the agreement resulted in hardline accusations that the Rouhani/Zarif team was not being honest.

Iran’s hardliners suspected that the “Fact Sheet” was kept secret because it would reveal the extent of the concessions made by the Iranian team in Switzerland. In other words, the moderate negotiating team dispatched from Tehran suddenly found itself defending against allegations that it had betrayed the national interest. If nothing else, the “Fact Sheet” affair is a vivid example of the severe splits and lack of trust between the two main factions inside the Iranian state machinery.

Meanwhile, the decision by the U.S. Senate on May 7 to pass a bill that gives the U.S. Congress power to review and authorize a nuclear accord with Tehran was considered by Iranian hardliners as a prime example of overt American insincerity. They viewed the measure by the Senate as a premeditated and inter-agency attempt by the American side to keep its options open, both in terms of an ability to walk away from the talks at Washington’s choosing by invoking the Senate bill, but also by renewing military threats to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities in the event of the talks breaking down.

That the U.S. Senate and the Obama administration have serious differences of opinion on the Iran question has never played a large role in shaping the posture of the hardliners in Iran that prefer simplicity over elaboration when untangling the American policy process. But what matters most is the stance of the office of the supreme leader and the message from there has been unmistakably clear. As Ali Akbar Velayati, a top foreign policy advisor to Khamenei put it, “the continuation of nuclear talks with the P5+1 is only acceptable when America stops threatening” Iran.

Other quarrels associated with the Lausanne agreement are about the number of centrifuges to be left operating and the inspection regime that Iran will have to accept as part of any permanent nuclear deal. The head of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, has openly disputed Zarif’s account and suggested that Washington is backing away about the number of centrifuges to remain at Iran’s Fordo nuclear enrichment facility following a deal. Iranian press quoted Boroujerdi as saying that “any agreement in the nuclear issue is a two-way road” and warning that “if they back away, we will certainly back away, as well.”

At the same time, the hardline generals in Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) have made it clear they will not provide unfettered access to military sites and to Iranian scientists in order to be interviewed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In fact, the head of the IAEA, Yukiya Amano, is routinely accused by hawks in Tehran of doing the bidding of American and Israeli intelligence services by sabotaging Iranian nuclear activities.

Fars News, an influential outlet close to the IRGC, quoted IRGC Deputy Commander Brigadier General Rasoul Sanayee Rad as claiming that “the information about the six Iranian nuclear scientists that have been assassinated in the last several years was leaked by the IAEA.” In other words, the lack of trust in the IAEA is cited as justifiable grounds for not opening sensitive Iranian sites to international inspection.

Still, this sort of posturing by the IRGC is at this juncture mostly about grandstanding for a domestic audience, which has come to expect bluster from the IRGC ranks. In the context of access to military sites to international inspectors, the more likely policy to be adopted in Tehran is one mentioned by the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, who said on April 26 Tehran will allow IAEA access to non-nuclear sites under certain conditions.

“If the IAEA would like to inspect non-nuclear sites, they have to first of all tell Iran so and then justify why they want to do so,” Salehi laid out.

The hardening of the rhetoric from Khamenei’s office or among the IRGC generals, however, should not be confused with a sudden decision to cease support for nuclear talks overall. Khamenei hasn’t abandoned his earlier suspicions about American intentions toward Iran, but his support of the talks continues to rest on a necessity to break the nuclear stalemate. In order to, at a minimum, scale back the crippling sanctions, which have brought havoc on the Iranian economy since mid-2012, the talks must go forward.

The Office of the Supreme Leader does not want to magnify factional differences in Tehran to the point of actually jeopardizing the talks. As Velayati put it on April 26, “the Iranian nation remains united when it comes to the country’s major political issues.”

For his part, Khamenei will continue to publicly support the talks but will make sure he keeps enough distance from the Rouhani administration’s handling of the nuclear talks to  enable the leader to disassociate himself from any failure to reach a permanent deal. On the other hand, Khamenei has made it abundantly clear that continuing to negotiate beyond the June 30 deadline is not a setback and might in fact be necessary as the two sides continue to look for ways to bridge the various differences. He insists that he is willing to sign off only on a good deal that preserves Iran’s national interests. What constitutes Iranian national interests, however, is at the crux of the battle of ideas in Tehran.

Ambitious Moderates

In contrast to the hardline camp – which despite the April 2 interim agreement, insists that “America cannot be trusted” as Khamenei routinely repeats in his speeches – the Iranian moderates are full of undisguised optimism about the likelihood and the implications of reaching a deal by June 30. This optimistic tone is set by Rouhani himself in the presidential palace, echoed by his ministers in the cabinet, and reflected in editorials throughout the moderate and reformist media.

In responding to criticism from the hardliners, the moderate wing of the Iranian state has constantly urged calm. In reference to the May 7 Senate bill, the moderates stick to the message formulated by Zarif. The foreign minister dismissed Congressional obstructionism as a domestic American matter and of no concern to Tehran. According to Zarif, if the White House signs a deal with Iran then the agreement will, in the eyes of international law, be binding on the United States regardless of any opposition to such an agreement in Congress.

A prominent reformist paper, Mardom Salari, reiterated the policy position of the Rouhani government but went further, reminding its readers that “America needs Iran’s support and help to resolve its big and small issues [in the Middle East], and the only key to opening this lock lies in resolving Iran’s nuclear issue and the and lifting all the hostile sanctions.”

In a bold statement that only a couple of years ago would have gotten the editors of the paper in trouble with security services, Mardom Salari proposed that the “reality of the Middle East is that the Islamic Republic and United States have many common interests despite their radical positions against each other” and that collaboration between the two countries is inevitable.

Meanwhile, in a sign that the nuclear issue is increasingly open to public debate, moderate media are calling on hawks in Tehran to be answerable for the policy positions they advocate or adopt. When, for example, a number of hardline parliamentarians sought to introduce a bill in the Majlis, the Iranian parliament, as a response to the bill adopted by the U.S. Senate, the moderate media fired back.

A quid pro quo stance by Tehran was lambasted as counterproductive to Iranian interests after years of nuclear negotiations. Sharq newspaper called such a posture self-defeating and blasted the knee-jerk reaction as “unprofessional.” Again, Sharq and other moderate outlets were looking to the Rouhani government for a cue on how to handle hardline criticism of the talks and concessions given to the P5+1. The difference with the previous moderate administration, that of President Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), is that the Rouhani team is staying the course and pushing back against hardline intransigence.

A Larger Battle

The hardliners’ intransigence, however, is not abating. Their broader accusation is that the moderates are so deeply infatuated with the idea of improving relations with Washington that they have relinquished proper decorum in responding to the American side. As hardline Javan put it, “in a situation where Western officials have threatened Iran with the military attack more than ten times over the past 20 months of the nuclear negotiations... it is appropriate to expect that [Iranian] officials to give a proper and equal response in reaction to such remarks.”

In other words, a more muscular approach is more likely to yield better results. Javan and other hardline newspapers have also been swift to condemn reports that the Rouhani government had held talks with Washington about strengthening diplomatic ties between the two countries. Such talks are “hasty and against the national interests regardless of its outcome,” Javan complained.

Such anti-American voices in Tehran not only disagree with the inevitability of an end to hostile relations with the U.S., as moderates hold, but they actively set out to present alternatives to Iranian cooperation with the United States. The most commonly cited opportunity is the belief in a new Cold War between the Russians and the Chinese on the one hand, and the United States on the other. Iran, the hardliners in Tehran urge, should side with Moscow and Beijing. In one recent example, Iranian hawks were elated about joint exercises between the Russian and Chinese militaries in the Mediterranean. “The exercises convey a message to the West and their allies that crossing the Chinese and Russian security red lines will have heavy consequences,” as one paper in Tehran put it.

Javan said selecting the Mediterranean Sea for the drill conveys a clear message to Europe and America: “Their message clearly shows that these world powers no longer accept the Western unipolar approach and they are aimed at consolidating their military presence in that sensitive region for creating multipolar balance.” But the same type of hype about the need for Iran to choose the Russians and the Chinese over negotiating with the Americans has been ongoing since the outbreak of the Ukrainian crisis last year. As of today, few serious people in Tehran actually think that the key to Iran’s multiple economic challenges, including access to foreign investment and know-how, is to be found in Moscow and Beijing alone. 

The war of words between the hardliners and the moderates has implications that go far beyond the nuclear issue. At the heart of the split in Tehran lies the question of the future direction of Iranian foreign policy and the best ways to preserve the legacy of the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which brought the existing Islamist model to power in Tehran.

For the hardliners – who are by and large guided by Ayatollah Khamenei’s worldview and who have certainly, so far, opted not to disobey him on the nuclear issue – a deal is a transactional measure aimed to rid Iran of sanctions but without moving Iran onto another path on the international scene. For this group, with a vested interest in the status quo at home, the lifting of sanctions is the all-important narrow end goal itself.

The moderates, on the other hand, continue to consider and tout a permanent nuclear deal as a steppingstone to a broader process of détente with the West. The deal is meant to be a decisive turning point that opens Iran’s way back into the international political and economic mainstream, as Rouhani has promised his people. This is the vision he outlined in Davos. As unlikely as it might sound to skeptics around the world who have little hope in the political clout of the moderates in Tehran, this faction still feels it is a battle worth fighting. They believe there is still hope for success.

Interestingly, the moderates’ hope is, to a large extent, pinned on Ayatollah Khamenei. With Khamenei as supreme leader any major foreign policy shift in Tehran is unlikely in the foreseeable future. He has, however, in the last two years made it abundantly clear that he is open to striking deals with the Americans and the West if it serves Iranian interests. As part of his much-publicized notion of “heroic flexibility,” Khamenei keeps repeating two simple messages. First, that he does not trust the Americans. But second, that if the ongoing nuclear negotiations are completed successfully and set a good precedent then Iran and the U.S. can look for other arenas for cooperation.

The American Challenge

However, as everyone admits, including the industrious Zarif, the road to rehabilitating Iranian-American relations will be long and arduous. From an American perspective, Iran continues to be strategically one of the most sensitive countries in the world. From 1941 until the revolution of 1979 that resulted in the fall of the pro-American Shah, Iran was one of Washington’s staunchest allies in the Middle East. Most importantly, Iran was a bastion of anti-communism and highly instrumental in U.S. plans to contain Soviet expansionism in Asia. However, the post-1979 rise of a revolutionary and often xenophobic Islamist system in Tehran transformed Iran into one of the principal adversaries of the United States.

Over the last 36 years, the U.S. has accumulated a litany of grievances against the Iranian regime’s foreign policy behavior. This includes overt Iranian challenges to U.S. interests in the Middle East and beyond; support for militant organizations such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and other militant groups elsewhere; acting as one of the primary sponsors of violence against the State of Israel and opposing American efforts toward an Arab-Israeli peace process; undermining U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan; destabilizing pro-U.S. Arab states such as Saudi Arabia; seeking alliances with other U.S. rivals such as Russia and China; and pursuing both nuclear and long-range missile programs that have great potential to undermine and even endanger U.S. national security interests.    

As we look into the future, Iran, a country of nearly 80 million people and with a highly vibrant civil society that includes considerable political competition within the ranks of the Islamist ruling elite, will continue to be a critical policy challenge for the United States. As of mid-2015, however, there can be no doubt that the faction led by President Rouhani wants to pursue a policy of dialogue with the United States.

This faction, which can trace its desire to cut deals with Washington to the mid-1990s when Rouhani’s mentor Ayatollah Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was president, has not necessarily arrived at this policy preference because of ideological introspection per se, but due to pragmatism. The view from this camp is that the only way the Islamic Republic can secure its continuing political rule in Tehran is by overhauling its foreign policy and looking for ways to return to the global economy. In many ways, the Rouhani administration echoes the foreign policy aspirations of both the pragmatic Rafsanjani presidency but also that of the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami. 

As was the case during the Khatami administration, other factions within the regime are far less convinced about the need to re-examine the orthodoxies of the Islamic Republic, a stance that is increasingly creating the conditions for a contentious battle for the future direction of Iranian foreign policy. Meanwhile, in between the moderates and the hardliners, there are a number of other key personalities and institutions that are part of the political system, with views that fluctuate between the two opposite poles.

It is, however, important to remember that this post-revolution intra-regime rivalry has continued unabated since 1979. Rouhani and his foreign minister Zarif regularly clash with hardliners in the parliament and those in the ranks of the IRGC, but the precedent was set long before they came to power. There are many such cases today of policy disputes inside the regime. The individuals involved come at it from different political corners and with different intentions but nearly always do so in order to enhance their domestic legitimacy and staying power.

Deep foreign policy splits can even be found inside the Office of the Supreme Leader, an institution that is otherwise known for its policy steadiness. During the lively 2013 presidential election, Velayati and Saeed Jalili, two prominent figures who are both closely associated with the Supreme Leader, clashed fiercely on the question of the future of Iranian foreign policy and how best to secure Iran’s national interests.

That high-profile example showcased the intensity of the debate inside the decision-making process of the Islamic Republic about the future trajectory of the country’s foreign policy. The nuclear negotiations with the P5+1 and the U.S. in particular, are the first and perhaps the most important test as the divided Iranian side wrestles with the question of its international identity and its role in the world. But given the long list of outstanding disputes between Iran and the U.S., it can hardly be expected to be the last test.