Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

The consensus among senior officials close to the nuclear talks with Iran is that no long-term deal over Iran’s nuclear programme will be reached by the 20 July deadline for the ending of the current interim agreement which was struck in November 2013.  However, the November agreement allows for a six-month extension if more time is required to reach a final deal.  The sticking point in the talks appears to be the number of centrifuges that Iran wants to keep for enrichment purposes, but the real problem could be the growing tension between Iran’s reformist President Hassan Rouhani and hardliners.

The latest row between the president and the hardliners blew up over Rouhani’s remarks at a health insurance conference in Tehran on 24 May when he said that the state should not “interfere so much in the everyday lives of people”.  He said: “Allow people to choose the path to heaven themselves.  One cannot lead people to heaven by force or using a whip.”

A week earlier, on 17 May, Rouhani had defended people’s right to access the internet.  He said: “I recognize the right to connect to the worldwide network is a civil right.  The age of giving messages from one-way and traditional loudspeakers, podiums, and tribunes has ended.”

The hardline cleric Ahmad Khatami responded at Friday prayers in Mashhad on 30 May by saying: “The responsibility of a religious state is to pave the way to paradise…Using the whip is the least thing: if necessary we will strongly stand against those who aim to prevent people from going to heaven.”

On 31 May, Rouhani re-entered the fray in his speech marking World Environment Day in Tehran.  He said: "Some people, who are idle, suffer from illusions.  They are continually concerned about people's religion and afterlives while they know neither the religion nor the afterlife.”

Social networking platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are still blocked for most people, and on 21 May, Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli-Larijani defended strict internet control in Iran, saying: “Installing barbed wire around a quagmire should not be interpreted as lack of trust in the people and youth.  Trusting the youth is not in contradiction with blocking the dangerous path of enemy’s infiltration.  Those who do not believe that cyberspace is poisonous clearly have no understanding of such space.”

Iranian opposition sources say that the disagreements between the hardliners and Rouhani are “serious and deep”. They also indicate that Rouhani’s recent comments have inevitably created a hardline reaction across all the issues that divide the hardliners from the reformists, including on the nuclear question.