Western media breathlessly reported Sunday that an Iranian parliamentary committee “gave its support to Iran’s nuclear agreement with world powers,” treating the move as if it were a major and necessary step in the Islamic Republic’s acceptance of the deal. But the media is focusing on a relatively unimportant and unsurprising story to the detriment of a major one – namely that the selfsame committee is using the Iran nuclear deal review to take President Rouhani down.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (7th L), parliament speaker Ali Larijani (6th L), Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani (8th L) and Vice-President Eshaq Jahangiri (5th L) attend a ceremony greeting the bodies of victims killed in Saudi Arabia during a stampede at the haj pilgrimage, at the Mehrabad International airport in Tehran October 3, 2015. REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi.
Let’s be serious: Parliament was always going to pass legislation approving the deal because Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei orchestrated Iran’s involvement in the nuclear negotiations and allowed it to sign the agreement in the first place. And the committee in question – called the Special Parliamentary Commission to Review the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA – merely submitted a preliminary report of its review of the deal. The report itself is simply a recommendation for action to the Parliament at large. Parliament has not and will not vote on the report itself. (About which more in a separate post.)
The significance of the Iranian parliamentary review process has little to do with any ultimate (and probably unsurprising) vote. Instead, the process is significant because it has allowed US partner and nuclear deal architect Hassan Rouhani’s conservative opponents to disrupt the victory lap he began following the agreement and provided them with an issue around which to unify ahead of the forthcoming parliamentary and presidential elections.
As I argue in my just-released report, Iran’s Domestic Political Scene and the Nuclear Deal, the Supreme Leader’s public defense of the negotiations constrained Rouhani’s conservative opponents to find alternative ways of attacking the deal that might be acceptable to Khamenei. The result was Parliament’s formation of the review committee and the appointment of an ambitious parliamentarian named Ali Reza Zakani at its head. Why Zakani? A savvy and aggressive conservative, Zakani led commission members and other conservative political figures in an increasingly high-profile fight with Rouhani, who opposed the parliamentary review vigorously. Indeed, the spat forced the intervention of the Supreme Leader, who came down heavily against Rouhani and for the review.
While it remains to be seen whether the conservatives will be able to maintain the temporary unity Zakani has succeeded in forging, it is apparent that the agreement has so far reinvigorated Rouhani’s foes rather than strengthening the Iranian president as the White House and US advocates of the deal suggested. And with parliamentary elections coming up in 2016 and presidential elections in 2017, it seems quite clear that the Supreme Leader is not unequivocally on the side of either Rouhani or his pal, foreign minister Javad Zarif.
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