Iran’s Hardliners Leverage Mourning for Khamenei to Pressure Nuclear Talks as U.S. Strikes Resume

The striking prominence of red flags — a Shiite Muslim symbol of vengeance — among the sea of mourners attending the weeklong funeral of Iran’s late supreme leader served as an unsubtle declaration that the country should continue its confrontation with the United States.

That demand comes from ultra-hard-liners in the Islamic Republic who seek to maintain the 47-year standoff with Washington. Analysts viewed the flags as a vivid illustration of the jockeying for position amid Iran’s newly fluid politics, triggered by the U.S.- and Israeli-launched war in February that decapitated the leadership and sowed political uncertainty in Tehran.

“The hard-liners are attempting to use the atmosphere of mourning, national insecurity, and opposition to negotiations to narrow the range of politically acceptable debate and to portray compromise as both strategically dangerous and morally illegitimate,” said Saeid Golkar, a professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga who studies Iran’s security forces.

In any case, prospects for a compromise dimmed last week when the United States and Iran resumed military strikes. The fighting was prompted by the unresolved question of the extent of Iranian control over vital shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz.

The collapse of the cease-fire jeopardized the memorandum of understanding that the two sides signed on June 17 as a blueprint for future peace talks, including the fate of Iran’s nuclear program.

Fighting resumed Saturday evening and continued into Sunday, with strikes by both sides. Iran announced that the strait would be closed indefinitely after its navy fired warning shots that halted a merchant vessel navigating without permission, according to a statement carried by the official IRIB state broadcaster. U.S. Central Command said it was carrying out retaliatory strikes inside Iran.

The renewed warfare further deepened differences over the wisdom of negotiating that have been evident in Iran since talks began.

“There is tension between those who favor the primacy of the ‘battlefield’ and those who favor ‘diplomacy,'” said Ali Fathollah-Nejad, director of the Center for Middle East and Global Order, a think tank in Berlin. Those skeptical of diplomacy believe that Iran’s nuclear program, its ballistic missiles, and its proxy forces across the Middle East are “indispensable pillars for regime survival, deterrence, and power projection — and therefore nonnegotiable,” he said.

Overall, the death of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at the start of the war is believed to have strengthened the hand of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in running the country. The absence of his son and successor in public has helped feed an air of uncertainty.

“The political atmosphere is very fluid; we don’t really know who is running the regime,” Mr. Golkar said. “The system is changing; they need time to consolidate power.”

The hard-liners are generally considered more noisy than influential, and there are plenty of proponents of negotiations among them, not least to allow Iran to fix its shattered economy.

Iran has been down a similar road before. Comparable tensions developed while the Obama administration and other world powers negotiated the landmark 2015 international nuclear agreement.

At that time, factional rivalries pitted reformists who sought internal change and pragmatic diplomacy against conservatives bent on driving the United States out of the region.

Then, in 2018, President Trump pulled out of that nuclear deal. The reformists were pilloried for being duped by Washington into limiting the nuclear program, paving the way for conservatives to consolidate control of the government.

“The ruling elite continues to be dominated by various shades of hard-liners,” Mr. Fathollah-Nejad said.

None tolerate internal dissent, but one camp describes itself as pragmatic, arguing that survival requires ending hostilities with the United States and opening the economy. The other, a minority of hard-liners, rejects any concessions to Washington, including those related to Iran’s nuclear program, and believes Iran can prevail by prolonging the war.

The dominance of the military has reduced the influence of political factions, analysts said, since security establishment priorities now take precedence. For the moment, the establishment has favored negotiation. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Parliament and lead negotiator, is a former Revolutionary Guards commander who fiercely criticized the negotiations over the 2015 nuclear agreement.

Even if wider military control of the government limits factional machinations over policy, the leadership still must take into account the outlook of the hard-liners’ social base. Hard-line regime supporters are generally estimated at up to 20 percent of the 93 million population. They were undoubtedly the core of the mourners at the weeklong funeral that ended Thursday.

Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who succeeded his father as supreme leader, joined the calls for vengeance. “We pledge that we will avenge your pure blood and the blood of all those martyred in these two wars from the criminal and disgraced killers,” he said in a rare statement issued on Saturday. “This revenge is the demand of our nation, and it must certainly be carried out.”

The younger Mr. Khamenei did not attend his father’s funeral and has not been seen in public since he was reportedly gravely wounded in the initial attack on Iran on Feb. 28. He had earlier released an ambiguous statement assenting to the memorandum of understanding but disagreeing with signing it “as a matter of principle.”

That ambiguity gave extremists a window to try to influence policy, analysts said, prompting a concerted effort that culminated in the red flags at the funeral. Many were emblazoned with an Arabic phrase meaning “O Vengeance for Hussein.” The death of Imam Hussein in A.D. 680 at the hands of a tyrant is a significant Shiite symbol for avenging innocent blood and resisting tyranny.

“Hard-liners believe that the Islamic Republic should explicitly threaten to personally avenge the assassination of its leader and senior officials, not merely as a bargaining strategy but also as a means of deterring future attacks,” said Mohammad Tabaar, a professor at Texas A&M University who specializes in Iranian politics. “We now see this idea gradually being adopted by the leadership, as reflected in the prominent use of red symbolism during Khamenei’s funeral.”

Hossein Shariatmadari, the influential editor of the Kayhan newspaper, whose columns often reflect hard-line thinking, questioned why negotiators had accepted allowing any shipping through the strait. “You know for sure,” he wrote, “that opening the Strait of Hormuz is tantamount to disarming Islamic Iran in the face of enemy attacks?!”

In an even more explicit demand, he wrote a front-page editorial last week titled “We Want Trump’s Head,” which demanded that the government declare the U.S. president a legitimate target and offer a hefty reward for his killing. Several other conservative or extremist dailies published similar front-page threats against Mr. Trump. Aside from the killing of the supreme leader, hard-liners hold Mr. Trump responsible for authorizing the assassination of Qassim Suleimani, an important IRGC commander, in Baghdad in 2020.

The regime has long used crowd size as a mark of its legitimacy, so the millions of mourners in Iran and Iraq were cited as evidence that the government in Tehran enjoyed both domestic and regional support. Yet economic problems set off widespread demonstrations in Iran earlier this year that were put down with extreme violence, with many government critics disappointed that the war did not bring regime change.

Still, the government has to tread carefully when it comes to public perceptions of the negotiations.

“They have to think about the regime’s social base,” said Mr. Golkar, the University of Tennessee professor. “That is the core that has kept the regime in power for the last four decades. Every time there is a crisis, they come out. They cannot throw them under the bus.”

The government might ultimately jettison its anti-American ideology should the benefits prove worthwhile, analysts said. “If they see a deal beneficial to them and credible in terms of the U.S. delivering its end of the bargain, they would absolutely welcome it because it could increase their own constituency in Iran,” said Mr. Tabaar, the Texas A&M professor. “It could appeal to a lot of Iranians who want to have better relations with the U.S.”

At present, strong doubts persist about the United States upholding any bargain. Given the history, analysts said, there is widespread suspicion that Mr. Trump, although he wants a deal to help reduce oil prices, will eventually renege on it.

Those negotiating are careful to keep their distance to avoid looking like chumps if the United States tears up yet another agreement. Mr. Trump was quick to call the memorandum “over” during recent flare-ups.

Soon after the negotiations began, Esmail Baghaei, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, was asked why the Iranian delegation had refused to shake hands publicly with their U.S. counterparts. He quoted the poet Rumi: “Since there are many devils with human faces, one should not give one’s hand to every hand.”

Source link