Iran's hardliners target Rouhani as US pressure grows
Growing US pressure on Iran has weakened President Hassan
Rouhani and made his hardline rivals more assertive at home and abroad, recent
developments show.
When he succeeded firebrand leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in
2013, Rouhani was seen as an establishment figure who would do little to end
Iran’s long standoff with the West. Two years later, his administration signed
the nuclear deal with six world powers that spurred hopes for wider political
change.
Rouhani’s authority is now waning: his brother, a key adviser
on the 2015 deal, has been sentenced to jail on unspecified corruption charges,
a hardline rival heads the judiciary and his government is under fire for
responding too softly to US President Donald Trump’s sanctions squeeze.
Trump has said lifting sanctions in return for curbs on
Iran’s nuclear program did not stop Tehran meddling in neighboring states or
developing ballistic missile capabilities and Rouhani’s outreach to the West
was a fig leaf.
Yet the US pullout from the nuclear deal a year ago and
subsequent attempts to end Iran’s oil exports have led to a sharp increase in
regional tension: the US military said on Tuesday it was braced for “possibly
imminent threats to US forces” from Iran-backed forces in neighboring Iraq.
Rouhani has urged opposing factions to work together and
noted limits on his power in a country where an elected government operates
under clerical rule and alongside powerful security forces and an influential
judiciary.
“How much authority the government has in the areas that are
being questioned must be examined,” the presidency’s website quoted Rouhani as
saying on Saturday, an apparent attempt to fend off public anger at plummeting
living standards.
Ebrahim Raisi, who became head of the judiciary in March and
is a contender to succeed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, retorted that
all branches of government had sufficient authority to carry out their duties.
Local media interpreted the statement as a direct rebuke
from Raisi, who ran against Rouhani in the 2017 presidential election.
On May 4, Rouhani’s brother Hossein Fereydoun was sentenced
to prison. The judiciary has not given details of the charges against him and
attempts by Reuters to seek comment were unsuccessful. The judiciary has said
it has no political motivation for the cases it tries.
“OFFENSIVENESS AND ARROGANCE”
Rouhani has two years until his term ends, but if he is seen
by Iranians as responsible for their problems, his successor is more likely to
take a hard line with the West, some analysts say.
When Rouhani announced last week that Iran would roll back
some of its commitments under the international nuclear deal a year after Trump
withdrew, the hardline daily Kayhan newspaper called the move “late and
minimal”.
“If Mr. Rouhani’s government had reacted reciprocally from
the beginning to the broken promises of America and Europe, they (the Americans
and Europeans) would not have reached this level of offensiveness and arrogance,”
an article in the newspaper said on Thursday.
Restrictions on social media, championed by hardline
officials and clerics, are putting further political pressure on Rouhani, who
promised in his 2017 and 2013 election campaigns to lift such curbs.
Telegram, a messaging app popular in Iran, was banned last
year. Twitter is also banned and hardliners have set their sights on Instagram,
used by some 24 million Iranians.
In his comments on Saturday, Rouhani said the government
does not have full authority over the cyberspace, underlining the limits to his
powers.
He and other officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei, have active Twitter accounts despite the ban.
Last month, Instagram shut down several accounts under the
names of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, the country’s most powerful
military and economic force, after Washington declared the Guards a foreign
terrorist organization.
Some lawmakers are now seeking a complete ban on Instagram,
one of the few social media platforms yet to be blocked.
Javad Javidnia, the deputy in charge of cyberspace affairs
at the prosecutor general’s office in Tehran, said last month Instagram would
be blocked unless the government found an effective way to monitor its content,
Fars news agency said.
Telecoms Minister Mohammad Javad Azari-Jahromi told Reuters
in an interview last month that he used social media actively, including
Twitter, and wanted fewer restrictions. But he said filtering usually takes
place with a judicial decree.
“Ayatollah Raisi has recently started his work in this area
and we will have to see what his view will be,” he said.
“FILL THE EMPTY SPOT”
The Guards have used authorities’ response to heavy flooding
in March to criticize the government and promote their effectiveness.
A video of the head of the Guards’ ground forces lambasting
the government after visiting a flood-stricken area in western Iran in early
April was widely circulated on social media.
“There are a lot of problems. There is no management. No
government official has the courage to go there,” Brigadier General Mohammad
Pakpour said in the video. “It’s horrible.”
Hardline news sites posted pictures of members of the Guards
helping remote villages, with their uniforms covered in mud.
Iran’s Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh, a Rouhani ally who has
tried to attract investment, has been accused by hardline politicians of giving
away the nation’s wealth and criticized for not doing more to bypass sanctions.
The Guards have developed expertise in bypassing sanctions
through years of experience and are now eyeing opportunities arising from the
new US economic restrictions.
Khatam al Anbia, the Guards’ huge engineering and construction
arm, controls over 800 affiliated companies worth billions of dollars. Its head,
Saeed Mohammad, said at an oil and gas exhibition in Tehran on May 2 that the
firm has the ability to develop a phase of South Pars, the world’s largest gas
field, according to the Iranian Students’ News Agency.
“Our goal is to fill the empty spot left by foreign
companies,” he said.