Flowers or Flower Pots? That is the Hardliners' Question

A satirist at the hardline newspaper Kayhan reacted to the extension of Iran’s nuclear negotiations with the following joke:  “If you only threw a flower at the plaintiff then why does he have a fractured head?” a judge asks the accused.  “Your honor,” the accused replies, “I threw the flower with the flower pot.”

The accused in this joke is meant to be the group of P5+1 countries, particularly the United States, who agreed this past week to release $2.8 billion of blocked Iranian assets. “But in the past six months they have frozen $30 billion more in addition to the $100 billion already blocked, and in the next four months they will continue to block huge sums,” Kayhan complained. Kayhan newspaper is published under direct supervision of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Ayatollah has the final say in all foreign affairs and military matters. He has repeatedly expressed his suspicion of the Western negotiators and has doubted that the nuclear negotiations will ever succeed. 

Khamenei supporters' frustration over frozen assets and the unwelcome delay is founded on the basis that Iran is failing to benefit from the nuclear negotiations, and that the release of certain blocked assets is a chimera. Hardliners continue to accuse Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and his negotiating team of granting new concessions to the West.

One such concession, wrote hardliner daily Vatan-e Emrouz, is “converting the stockpile of 20 percent-enriched uranium oxide to fuel.” Another is “diluting 3,000 kilos of five percent-enriched uranium down to the level of natural uranium. Iran is giving concessions while the other side has not reciprocated properly.” As a result, “Iran has agreed to a complete course reversal on enrichment,” wrote the Raja News website.

The website Nuclear Iran affiliated with Saeed Jalili, the chief nuclear negotiator under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, asked Iran’s Nuclear Energy Organization to immediately investigate the numbers and report whether the 3,000 kilos mentioned above are included in the 7,000-kilogram Iranian stockpile.

In recent months some critics of President Hassan Rouhani’s administration have turned from political accusations to technical critiques and the use of statistics. What has made this approach more effective is the red lines surrounding uranium enrichment drawn by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who recently disclosed confidential information about the Vienna negotiations.

But politics still remain at the centre of this issue. “In the next four months a massive political battle to change Iranian positions will be waged in the media,” wrote Mehdi Mohammadi, an ally of Jalili, in an op-ed in Vatan-e Emrouz. “There’s no doubt that some people inside the country will try to fulfil the American plan. History will record and remember which political groups have served the country and which have betrayed it. If Iranians are truly determined then changing American demands and calculations is not impossible, provided people make it clear whose side they’re on.”

This early wave of blame, in response to the extension given, clearly shows that Zarif and his colleagues must be prepared for renewed criticism in the coming months.

Saeed Zibakalam, a hardline critic of Rouhani at Tasnim News Agency, writes “the Americans know very well that this administration is a golden opportunity for them to fulfil their frustrated wishes to subjugate Iran in every way over the past thirty-five years. They will not waste this unique chance to get as much as they can. As a result, they insist on reaching a final agreement but have come up with their own red lines against Iran —red lines that if the Iranian negotiators and the Iranian government had their way would have been turned into a red carpet for the Westerners in the early weeks of the negotiations.”

The hardliner MP Esmail Kosary told the Online News website that in practice the only difference between this team of negotiators and the previous one is style. “This team hasn’t achieved anything it can show,” he said.

In a conference in Shiraz about Iran’s nuclear program, former ambassador and diplomat Naser Nobari, now a central figure among Rouhani’s critics, called the Iranian strategy “a mistake” and said that “the extension of negotiations is their gain and our loss because the sanctions will go on.”

Critics close to the previous negotiating team are trying to use the opportunity to settle old scores. Rouhani’s people “used to say that negotiations failed because Jalili is ignorant of diplomatic tactics and reads statements instead of negotiating,” wrote 598, a website affiliated with the hardline Endurance Front. “Now that six rounds of official negotiations and scores of two-party and multi-party negotiations have resulted in failure in Vienna and the Coburg Hotel [the site of negotiations] is engulfed in black smoke, the Iranian public has important questions to ask. Is Zarif familiar with the intricacies of diplomacy? Why was this government unable to gain the trust of the Americans despite retreating from anti-Imperialist positions? Why has talking to the ‘Lord of the Manor’ achieved nothing? Was Zarif reading statements during the negotiations?”

In another report the same site raised questions about the financial arrangements in the Geneva agreement. It accused Western powers of trickery and breach of promise in regards to frozen Iranian assets and inquired about the location of unblocked funds. “Have these funds made an impact on people’s lives and the performance of the economy,” it asked. “Have they been spent on priorities? Couldn’t the negotiating team foil American deception with a little vigilance?”

The extent of attacks on Rouhani’s government by hardliners demonstrates their distrust of its policies despite the repeated and explicit support given to it by Ayatollah Khamenei. They believe that the new negotiating team is Western-influenced, is engaged in conspiracies and intends to surrender to the West.

A few days ago the retired General Saeed Ghasemi, a popular figure among the hardliners, summarized their feeling in a gathering held to discuss nuclear issues. Referring to the pessimism expressed by the Supreme Leader regarding negotiations, he opposed the talks in principle. “We must not shake their hands and sit with them around the same table,” he said. “We have our own culture, and they have their own ideology. These two have nothing in common and cannot sit next to each other.”

If this is the their position, there is no doubt that Iranian hardliners are not ready to give any respite to the negotiating team, let alone support. If some day they wish to present a flower to Rouhani, it’s likely they’ll throw the whole flower pot.