Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

Understandably, the headlines on Iran have all been about the failure of the latest round of nuclear negotiations in Geneva to produce an agreement.  Expectations that an agreement would be signed had been raised by the presence of the foreign ministers from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council towards the end of the talks.  The talks stumbled over exactly what Iran was prepared to concede at this stage and over the scheduling of sanctions relief.  That there has been disappointment in the West over the failure to reach an acceptable deal is clear, but perhaps as interesting is the growing sense within reformist circles in Iran that President Hassan Rowhani has not lived up to his promise in his first 100 days in office since being elected in June 2013.

Reformist sources in Iran say that the real issue is whether or not Rowhani will continue to have the support of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei against the hardliners.  The clearest evidence that he did have Khamenei’s support for a major change in direction was the telephone conversation with US President Barack Obama during the UN General Assembly in September.  This was accompanied by a meeting between the new Iranian foreign minister, Java Zarif, and US Secretary of State John Kerry.

In addition to this, Rowhani made a conciliatory gesture towards Israel on 4 September when he said: “As the sun is about to set here in Tehran, I wish all Jews, especially Iranian Jews, a blessed Rosh Hashaneh.”  At the same time Zarif tweeted: “Iran has never denied it [the Holocaust].  The man who did [former president Ahmadinejad] is now gone.”

Other positive signs have included the meeting between Zarif and the UK’s Foreign Secretary William Hague on the sidelines of the nuclear talks in Geneva to agree a re-opening of their respective embassies in Tehran and London.

But in early November Khamenei started to throw out some negative signals.  On 3 November, for instance, his website reported him as making a speech to mark the takeover of the US embassy in 1979 in which he said: “No-one should consider our group of negotiators to be compromisers.  This is wrong.”  He added: “I am not optimistic.  I don’t think these negotiations will yield the results the Iranian nation expects.”

Sources say that the fate of political prisoners since Rowhani’s election is another indicator of how limited the reform agenda currently is.  Immediately following the new president’s inauguration, a number of high-profile political prisoners were released, including the human-rights lawyer Nasrin Sotudeh, former deputy foreign minister Mohsen Aminzadeh, and the reformist journalist Isa Saharkhiz.  But neither of the leading reformist politicians, Mirhoseyn Musavi and Mehdi Karrubi, has been released, even after the Justice Minister Mostafa Purmohammadi had said on 10 October that their house arrest was being reviewed.  By the end of October, Purmohammadi was saying that he didn’t intend to interfere in the matter.

It may also be symptomatic that, according to Amnesty International, there has been a surge in executions since Rowhani came to power, with some 265 executions in the past three months.

In another sign of the reformists’ lack of traction, while two banned reformist newspapers, Hammihan and Neshat, were allowed to begin publishing again in late October, the ban on Hammihan was quickly re-established on 4 November.  Another reformist paper, Bahar, has also been banned.

Sources say that these bannings are more a reflection of Rowhani’s inability to control the hardliners than of his own true inclinations, but in a sense that is an unimportant distinction because as time goes on, and progress is not made, Rowhani’s own credibility is beginning to fade.  And the hardliners have one thing on their side: the public is not greatly in favour of nuclear concessions as this is a question of national pride.  However, the public does want economic advancement – and so far Rowhani has been unable to deliver, which in turn is weakening him even though the key problem is that he is not being given a free hand in the negotiations to raise sanctions.

Rowhani made a rash election pledge when he said: “We pledge to the people that, in the first 100 days or even less, we will take necessary and urgent action with regard to the economy and inform people of the result.” 

He has not been able to deliver on this, or not much.  The value of the rial against the dollar may have bounced back 20%, but it had fallen by 50% in the 12 months before his election.  Inflation is running at 40%, and youth unemployment (that is unemployment among those aged 15-29) is up to 26% according to official statistics.

Against this grim background, and in view of the lack of likely progress on lifting sanctions, by 4 November Rowhani was forced to dampen expectations, saying: “We should constantly emphasize that one should not expect all the issues to be resolved in a short period of time.”  He is now saying that he hopes “to take the first step for resolving problems by the end of the year”, which in Iranian terms is March 2014.

The Israelis, more than anyone, are aware of the pressures that are mounting within Iran for economic advancement, and they are urging the US to use this as a lever to extract the maximum concessions over the nuclear question.  Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made this point publicly on 12 November at ‘Fuel Choices’ summit arranged by Bloomberg.  He said of the talks in Geneva: “The proposal that was put on the table, the details of which we are familiar with, is a bad deal.  It leaves Iran with nuclear capabilities for military objectives, and provides it with a significant easing of sanctions.  The additional danger is that it gives Iran legitimacy to be a nuclear threshold state.  That goes against the interests of the international community.”

He then added: “With every passing day, Iran is under growing economic pressure.  One need not be hasty to conclude a bad deal.  The time must be utilized for a good deal which dismantles Iran’s military nuclear capabilities.”

Against that, however, those in the Obama administration who sense a chance for the beginning of an historic reconciliation with Iran are fearful of losing Rowhani if he is unable to deliver on his economic pledges, so they are using that as an argument for a quick deal.  Netanyahu’s response to that proposition is that they will lose Rowhani anyway as, once a (bad) deal is done, it is the hardliners who will inherit the benefits.  The view of the Gulf Arabs, on the other hand, is that Iran is equally dangerous whether in the hands of hardliners or reformists and the only safe (for them) solution is to keep Iran in indefinite isolation.  JdeC.

NOTE: There has been an increase in attacks and assassinations of officials by Sunni Baluchi rebels in the south-eastern Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchistan.  The most recent incident was the assassination of the prosecutor in the town of Zabol on 6 November.  Two weeks earlier, on 25 October, rebels attacked an Iranian border post and killed 14 border guards.  In retaliation, Iran executed 16 imprisoned rebels.

The group responsible for the latest attacks is the Jaishhuladi, a Sunni rebel group.  It said that the assassination in Zabool was a retaliation for the execution of the 16 prisoners.  In the recent past it has also set ambushes to kill members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

The Iranian authorities have said the rebels are backed by the US, Israel, Pakistan, and “reactionary” Arab countries.  The presidential adviser for tribal affairs and religious minorities, Hojjat ol-Eslam Ali Yunesi, says: “These assassinations are a continuation of terrorist operations by Salafi groups affilliated with al-Qaeda and supported by the enemies of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”  Iran’s Deputy Interior Minister Hoseyn Ali Amiri has also said that Saudi Arabia could have been involved in the killing of border guards by the Baluchi rebels.

The suggestion of Saudi Arabian complicity has added resonance because of the strong Saudi objections to the incipient reconciliation between Iran and the US.