Reactions to Khamenei’s Nuclear Speech Mirror Iran’s Fault Lines

Iranian reactions to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s address Tuesday on international nuclear negotiations closely follow the country’s factional fault lines, from relative pragmatists desperate for sanctions relief to hardliners opposed to any accommodation with the West. It is the hardliners’ increasing clout in Tehran, however, that present one of the gravest challenges to reaching an agreement that international negotiators can and should accept.

Reacting to the speech, supporters of the diplomacy led by President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accentuated Khamenei’s praise for the negotiators as “brave” and “pious.” A mouthpiece of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), by contrast, headlined its response, “America aims to uproot Iran’s nuclear industry.”

This week’s events, however, underscore the fact that opponents of an agreement are winning the argument in Tehran. For one, Khamenei’s speech was replete with defiant rhetoric reiterating that Iran would not grant inspectors access to military sites, and that sanctions relief must come the day of the agreement goes into effect, regardless of Iranian fulfillment of the nuclear obligations laid out in it.

Moreover, the same day as Khamenei’s speech, Iran’s parliament overwhelmingly passed a bill that promises to preserve the country's “nuclear rights and achievements.” Hewing closely to Khamenei’s own red lines, the bill says a deal would be acceptable only if sanctions relief is immediate. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the bill says, will be allowed to conduct only “standard monitoring” (that is, none of the enhanced procedures stipulated in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty’s Additional Protocol) while access to Iran’s “military, security or sensitive non-nuclear centers, documents and scientists” is prohibited. “No restriction to research and development is acceptable,” the bill declares.

In stark contrast to the bombast expressed by Khamenei and his allies in parliament, Rouhani and his technocratic team appear to be on the defensive. The president was present at Khamenei’s speech, but made only a tepid effort to walk back the leader’s incendiary remarks: “In the final phases of the negotiations, we are in need of empathy, and our negotiators need support, encouragement, trust and calm.” As if to clearly demonstrate the presidency’s subservience to the supreme leader, Rouhani emphasized that a deal would represent “the success of the Iranian nation and the supreme leader of the revolution.”

The internal dynamics of the Islamic Republic are bound to further complicate what are already difficult nuclear negotiations. For while Khamenei continues to offer pro forma declarations of support to his negotiators, the red lines between which he allows them to operate are today narrower than ever. Under such circumstances, any agreed deal will inherently be one whose terms are dictated by a supreme leader determined to satisfy his regime’s most hardline elements. With less than a week left before the June 30 deadline for an agreement, the negotiating table appears tilted more than ever towards Tehran.

Ali Alfoneh is a senior fellow at Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Find him on Twitter: @Alfoneh