Anger among Iranian hardliners at terms of deal agreed with US | Iran

Iranian hardliners have been mounting a rearguard rejection of the deal with the United States, saying it does not guarantee sanctions relief, payment of compensation or control of the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian MP Kamran Ghazanfari said, “It is a blatant lie for them to say that we won and America withdrew.” Meysam Nili, managing director of Rajanews and brother-in-law of hardline former president Ebrahim Raisi, described the deal on the table as a disastrous capitulation. He urged Iranians not to sit quietly.

Faced with the attack, Iranian officials, led by Mehdi Mohammadi, an advisor to the head of the negotiating team, Mohammed-Bagher Galibaf, issued a detailed rebuttal in an audio message, emphasizing that the agreement would end the war, including Israel’s attack on Lebanon, and that Tehran was not required to make any new commitments on its nuclear program, leaving ways to dispose of highly enriched uranium (including down-blending within Iran) to the future. 60 days of negotiations

Mohammadi also said the text would allow Iran and Oman to charge fees for passage through the Strait of Hormuz, citing “Iranian regulations” and even prevent Israeli commercial ships from using the waterway.

He claimed that the US fought hard to exclude the phrase “Iran regulations” and agreed to the removal of primary sanctions for the first time in the second phase of the agreement. His account contrasts sharply with critics in terms of facts and interpretation; This, he said, was because they were working from outdated drafts.

Regarding the nuclear program, Mohammedi said the only statement in the text was that Iran would not build or purchase nuclear weapons, which he said was “what we have been saying for years”.

He said the proposed deal was better for Iran than the 2015 nuclear deal signed under Barack Obama, which lifted sanctions in exchange for limiting its nuclear activities, because it showed Tehran could control the Strait of Hormuz. “This time, we are not going to shut down the nuclear program and wait for the sanctions to be lifted,” he said. “There is no such wish. The Bosphorus is in our hands, we can close it whenever we want, whenever we want.”

He acknowledged that the text for the release of half of Iran’s frozen money held abroad (about $12 billion) has not yet been finalized. “We know America will not give us money,” he said. “The Arab countries have pledged this money and they have to give it because we are above them and they have seen our power in the region and have tasted our power. One consequence of this agreement is that the Arab countries are forced to accept Iran’s sovereignty and superiority and participate in making concessions.”

In Iran, critics aiming to fire at Ghalibaf and his foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, come from a group in parliament centered around the Paydari Front, including Mahmoud Nabavian, a hard-line member of the national security committee, commentators such as Hossein Shariatmadari, editor-in-chief of the Kayhan newspaper, and senior commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is working with Russia in Syria.

Opposition groups protested in front of the foreign ministry in Tehran and started the hashtag “we will not accept”. Government supporters say the Paydari Front opposes any deal and does not represent ordinary Iranians who know that wars against superpowers rarely end in outright victory.

Shariatmadari wrote in an open letter: “We must ask Mr. Ghalibaf and Mr. Araghchi: Wasn’t closing the Strait of Hormuz one of our country’s main levers in the Ramadan war, and didn’t closing the strait close the enemy’s commercial and economic breathing space, bringing him closer to suffocation?! With what logical justification and an acceptable explanation will these gentlemen give up this grave lever?!

“They say, ‘We will collect service fees from passing ships’! Is that so?! America and its allies martyred the former religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Islamic world shed the blood of dozens of nuclear scientists, senior military commanders, hundreds of innocent people and oppressed students. They caused hundreds of billions of dollars of damage… Are we now going to solve their economic and commercial bottleneck by opening the Strait of Hormuz and collecting service fees (!) from passing ships?!”

Hajatoleslam Naboyan, a hardline Shiite cleric and lawmaker who serves as the Paydari Front’s de facto foreign affairs spokesman, appeared incredulous that the proposed agreement appeared to allow free commercial shipping in the strait. “Will Israeli commercial ships also be released? This is the offer of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he said. “From now on, not the military, but all Israeli ships, all enemy countries, their ships and their movements in the Strait of Hormuz should be released.”

Khorasan newspaper expressed concern about the license given to critics of the proposed agreement. “If the regime is going to give this group the freedom to speak and assemble so that they can chant slogans against the negotiations and the negotiators, the same freedom should be given to the supporters of the agreement, so that they can gather and march in support of the regime’s decision to end the war, sign the agreement and even restart relations with the United States,” he said in the statement.

“Then it will be understood that the majority of the Iranian people support the regime’s will to reach an agreement, and the minority cannot impose its will on the regime and the nation by shouting, using national radio and television, and abusing meetings.”

Criticism from hardliners could help Donald Trump as the US president tries to justify the deal as better than Obama’s. However, the two agreements cannot be directly compared because the 2015 agreement was a specific and detailed arms control agreement and the memorandum of understanding focused on preconditions for a ceasefire.

Facing accusations that he has agreed to a destructive, expensive and illegal war that he can reach through diplomacy, Trump needs evidence that he is superior to the war Obama struck and from which the United States withdrew in 2018.