Iranians thought the nuclear deal would spark a new relationship with
the West. But the supreme leader had other plans.
BY Foreign
Policy SPECIAL
CORRESPONDENT
President Hassan Rouhani walk in front of Khmanei's picture
It was, in the words of the Washington Post‘s
executive editor, Martin Baron, “the grimmest” of milestones. On Dec. 3, Jason
Rezaian, the newspaper’s Tehran correspondent, spent his 500th day in Evin
Prison. He has now been detained in the Iranian capital two months longer than
the 52 Americans who were held captive in the U.S. embassy by radical students
who stormed the building in 1979, heralding a revolution and the end of Iran’s
formal diplomatic relations with America.
For the moment at least, the prospect of Rezaian being freed appears
based more on hope than solid facts. There is no sign Iran’s judiciary, in
spite of last summer’s nuclear deal with the West, is softening its stance. If
anything, it has been sending strong indications that it will refuse to be
influenced by outside pressure. On Nov. 22, a judiciary spokesman in Tehran confirmed Rezaian had been convicted on charges of
espionage and that his punishment included jail time. The length of his prison
sentence was not disclosed; the offenses are thought to carry a maximum jail
term of 20 years.
Having first warned of foreign “infiltration” in September, Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei took an even harsher line on Nov. 25. “There
is a deceitful, crafty, skillful, fraudulent, and devilish enemy,” he told
commanders of the Basij militia, a volunteer paramilitary force that takes
orders from the country’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. “Who is
that enemy? Arrogance. Of course today, the manifestation of arrogance is
America.”
Khamenei went further, suggesting foreign investment and cultural
influences would be the first way the West would try to bring down Iran’s
Islamic system. “The most important means are two things: One is money and
another is sexual attraction,” he said, warning that Iran’s “decision-makers
and decision-builders” would be targeted by foreigners who want to change the
beliefs and lifestyle of Iran’s people.
The
comments are a world away from the pragmatism Khamenei showed in agreeing to
the nuclear deal just months ago. While the supreme leader seemingly
wanted a deal to end sanctions so that Iran could rejoin the global economy,
his actions since suggest he doesn’t want to upset loyal elites who have been
enriched in the past decade.
Basij
commander Mohammad Reza Naqdi wasted little
time in following the supreme leader’s cue. Two days after
Khamenei’s remarks, he claimed the United States had allocated $2 billion to
depose the regime in Tehran. He explicitly placed Secretary of State John
Kerry, the man with whom Iranian diplomats negotiated the nuclear deal, at the
center of the conspiracy. “Some $200 million out of this sum was given
personally to John Kerry,” he said. “Kerry has so far headed 34 projects to
depose the Islamic regime.”
Both
Rezaian’s imprisonment and Naqdi’s allegations signal not only a split within
Iran’s political elite over its future relations with the United States, but
also a deeper divide between its politicians and long-suffering people. While
the religious power center of the Islamist establishment seems more vehement
than ever about the need to protect the principles of the 1979 revolution, many
of Iran’s technologically savvy young population shun the mosque and look
outward to the West for its entertainment and inspiration.
As
such, many are still leaving the country, convinced their hopes cannot be
realized. “I am not free,” said Golnaz, a 33-year-old MBA graduate who recently
moved to Canada to join a tech firm. Being friends with foreigners led to her
being followed and her emails being hacked. She believes President Hassan
Rouhani is trying his best, but, given the resistance he faces, it is not worth
the risk of continuing to waste years of her career.
Rouhani
and his top officials are caught in the middle between the people and the
regime. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif initially said that he hoped Rezaian would be found not guilty but has
since backed off that line when questioned about the reporter’s fate, probably
sensing the backlash in an increasingly abrasive domestic climate. “The charges
are serious and it’s a judiciary process,” Zarif said on Oct. 17, five days after the Washington
Post first reported Rezaian had been convicted.
Rouhani,
meanwhile, has openly raised the possibility of a prisoner swap, thought to
involve at least three Americans, including Rezaian, for 19 Iranians convicted
of sanctions offenses in the United States.
“If
the Americans take the appropriate steps and set them free, certainly the right
environment will be open and the right circumstances will be created for us to
do everything within our power and our purview to bring about the swiftest
freedom for the Americans held in Iran as well,” Rouhani said of the 19 jailed Iranians at the U.N. General
Assembly in New York on Sept. 27.
His
remarks, however, were followed by a sharp reminder at how little control he
apparently exerts over many of his country’s security institutions. Barely two
weeks later, the intelligence section of the Revolutionary Guards arrested an Iranian-American businessman, Siamak Namazi,
at the home of relatives in Tehran. Around the same time it emerged that a
Lebanese IT expert with residency in the United States, Nizar Zakka, had disappeared after a conference in the Iranian capital
a month earlier. Adding to Rouhani’s image of powerlessness, Zakka had been
invited to Tehran by the government. State television, a fiefdom of hardline
conservatives who operate under Khamenei’s authority, later said Zakka was
arrested for spying.
Namazi,
though long based in Dubai, is well known in Iran. His family’s Atieh Group had
strong business connections with the government during the presidency of
Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, from 1989 to 1997. Namazi also spoke out in favor of better Iranian-American relations
and, while serving as a partner of Atieh’s Tehran consultancy, had advised
foreign companies on how to do business in the Islamic Republic.
The
latest arrests are another embarrassment for Rouhani who has made a major play
for foreign investment to rebuild Iran’s sanctions-ravaged economy. On Nov. 28,
more than 100 foreign companies in the oil industry, headed by Shell, BP,
Total, and Petronas, came to Tehran and heard Iran’s oil minister make a pitch
for $30 billion of investment. There was undoubtedly interest among the
visitors — but if the IRGC continue to arrest foreign businessmen, the
enthusiasm could quickly disappear.
As
harsh as Khamenei’s remarks appear, a more optimistic interpretation is that
the government is willing to take symbolic actions that signal a staunch
anti-American stance — while in reality having no practical effect. On Nov. 5,
for instance, the Ministry of Industry, Mines, and Trade announced it would ban the import of all American consumer goods. A
push “to boost national production” was necessary instead, officials said.
The
announcement was greeted by laughter among many Iranians. “They are already
here,” Sara Ahmadi, a 30-year-old business executive, said of foreign brands,
pointing out that there are three Nike stores on one Tehran street alone. Those
shops, stuffed with clothing and exercise equipment bearing the famous “swoosh”
logo of the world’s largest sports manufacturer, feature genuine merchandise —
not the Chinese knock-offs sold in street markets in the capital. Several
of the massive malls that have opened in Tehran in recent years also have Nike
stores.
But
it’s instructive that those malls were all built by companies linked to the
IRGC. Iran has had commerce in Western goods in recent years, but it has mostly
been restricted to regime loyalists. The hiked prices of the Nike goods on sale
in Tehran suggest they were smuggled in to the country, likely from Dubai or
Turkey, with the cooperation, whether tacit or explicit, of the Iranian regime.
The inflated prices for premium Western products also mean that only the
country’s economic elite, which overlaps strongly with its political elite, can
afford to buy them.
While
such contradictions perturb Iran’s rapidly aging clerical leadership, they
leave Rezaian and his fellow captives looking like bit part players in a much
bigger puzzle.
The
nuclear deal may well have made the diplomatic deals struck in the past
considerably more difficult today. In 2010 and 2011, for instance, three
American hikers detained by Iran were freed after Oman brokered their release.
Then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had ordered them to be freed, only to be
temporarily thwarted when the judiciary cancelled their release.
Iranian
authorities, such as the IRGC and the judiciary, seem inclined to play the same
game with Rouhani. Even talk of a prisoner exchange in the aftermath of the
nuclear deal seems certain to provoke hard-liners dead set against any broader
opening toward the United States.
“To
the hard-liners that would look like another deal with America, and they don’t
want to send that signal,” said a Western diplomat in Tehran.
The
growing list of people languishing in prison, including dozens of Iranian
nationals on political charges, continues to dent Rouhani’s “moderate”
reputation ahead of parliamentary elections in February next year, seen as a
crucial test of the president’s clout and his hopes of re-election in 2017.
Though most Iranians see the judiciary rather than Rouhani as the culprit, he
is a potential fall guy for the frustrated.
“The
government has been backed into a corner and, whatever they do, Rouhani and his
people face a problem in getting out of this mess that the judiciary has
created,” the diplomat said.
But
more hopeful Iranians say Rouhani retains public confidence and shouldn’t
buckle in the face of provocations from the most anti-Western elements of the
regime. If the hard-liners are routed in the February elections, Rouhani will
have a stronger mandate to pursue his agenda.
“Ahmadinejad
and his cronies are not coming back,” a veteran political analyst said. “The
public mood has shifted and this is the hard-liners’ last hurrah. The worst
thing Rouhani could do would be to kowtow to them. But for now at least, none
of that helps Jason Rezaian.”
This article was published first by Foreign Policy
on 9/12/2015
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