Iran celebrates yet challenges remain for Rouhani

Δημοσιεύθηκε: 3 Απριλίου 2015 - 14:04

With the nuclear agreement announced late on Thursday on the shores of Lake Geneva, Iran's centrist president Hassan Rouhani has achieved a historic deal which even his allies doubted he could deliver.

Bridging the gap between Iran's conservative political hierarchy and the US - something many of his predecessors had tried but failed to do - required a Herculean effort and consummate negotiation skills.

Spontaneous celebrations erupted around the country at the news, with people singing, cheering and dancing; many holding Mr Rouhani's picture. "Without any doubt, Mr Rouhani has had a determining role in this agreement which has already brought psychological and political victories for his [pro-reform] camp," Mohammad-Sadegh Javadi-Hesar, a reformist politician said. "He showed that he meant it when he decided his main slogan during his campaign [in 2013] was 'centrifuges should spin, but so should people's lives'," he added.

But huge challenges remain for Mr Rouhani, not just in the thrashing out of technical details in the agreement in the months ahead, but in holding his ground against his domestic critics and enabling reformers to build on the gains already made.

Hardliners are eager to limit the president's political gains, amid fears this will translate into votes for reform in next year's parliamentary election. A parliamentary majority could help the reform camp implement economic reforms and build their support base ahead of the 2017 presidential elections, a scenario long feared by Iran's hardliners.

"The results of nuclear negotiations will have an impact on parliamentary poll. Reformists will have stronger participation," Mohammad-Reza Bahonar, a conservative politician and a critic of the president said before the agreement was reached.

Still, the hardliners' job will be made more difficult by the sheer scale of Mr Rouhani's achievement.

It is not that long ago that Iran talked about the need for tens of thousands of centrifuges while the US argued that Iran should have none at all.

The huge compromises made by Iran have been justified by Iran's supreme leader and ultimate decision-maker, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as the "heroic flexibility" that he says is mentioned in Islamic teachings.

Mr Rouhani is widely credited for pushing the supreme leader to compromise even further during the talks. In turn, the ayatollah's support emboldened the president to insult critics of the nuclear negotiations, calling them "illiterate" people who "have nothing else to do" and telling them they could "go to hell".

At one stage, he threatened to hold a referendum to demonstrate public support for a deal. He also accused his opponents, notably those in the elite Revolutionary Guards, of corruption, arguing they opposed a deal because sanctions favoured their business interests.

"If money, news websites, newspapers, news agencies, cannons and military equipment and other power examples gather in one place, even Salman and Abuzar [allies of prophet Mohammed] will become corrupt," he said late last year.

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>Ultimately, the support of the supreme leader makes it tougher for hardliners to call Mr Rouhani a traitor, as they did when he tried to negotiate a deal between 2003 and 2005. Then his efforts to reach an agreement to substantially limit the number of centrifuges and the country's uranium enrichment capabilities failed in the face of opposition from hardliners in Tehran and hawks in Washington. This intransigence cost Iran dear -an estimated hundreds of billions of dollars over the past decade. This latest deal follows years of sanctions and economic hardship and the pain of the past decade has contributed to the burgeoning expectations and the fevered hope that Iran could be at a turning point. And it is this that hardliners could exploit to their advantage.

With so many Iranians impatient to see the fruits of the deal almost immediately, it is hard for Mr Rouhani to tell them that they have to wait for months if not years. His opponents could fan public expectations that sanctions will be imminently lifted.

People already wonder how quickly the national currency - the rial which lost more than half of its value to the US dollars after sanctions were imposed about three years ago - will regain its strength. Some even talk about changing their cars when the prices go down. Already jokes are flying about how expectations are too high. "For God's sake, it was only a nuclear agreement but people think women [who are obliged to wear Islamic covering] can go out in small tops and shorts as of Saturday!" wrote one commenter on a social media network.

"People already expect to see improvement of the economy as of tomorrow and Rouhani has no choice but to tell them 'you need to wait'," said Saeed Laylaz, a reform-minded analyst. "These misperceptions of a nuclear agreement will be surely fanned [by hardliners] which can disappoint people."

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