Negotiations to reactivate the nuclear pact exacerbate the power struggle in Iran

The Foreign Minister and head of Iran's negotiating team at the Vienna nuclear talks, Mohammad Javad Zarif, last January.

The Vienna nuclear talks have exacerbated the power struggle that characterizes politics in Iran.

While the most immobile sectors of the regime chant "they will not move us", from the most pragmatic the damage of the sanctions is agitated in search of a consensus that allows solving the problem.

The tensions felt by the negotiators are reflected in the letter that the Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has written to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, asking for his support.

Also, the leak of an interview in which Zarif confesses his impotence before the preeminence of the Revolutionary Guard over the Government.

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"In the Islamic Republic, the military is in charge," Zarif says in a recording that was not intended to be published and in which he also assures that the Revolutionary Guard often overrides government decisions and ignores their advice. The minister says that General Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Guards expeditionary force assassinated by the US in January 2020, undermined his work on many occasions, although he also expresses admiration for him.

There is no great news in the content of the leaked material, part of a seven-hour conversation with the economist Saeed Leylaz for an oral history project on the presidency of Hasan Rohaní, in which all the ministers participate. Any observer knows that the Revolutionary Guard is the power that sustains the Iranian theocracy. However, Zarif's frankness and, above all, the moment of dissemination was surprising: in the midst of an internal battle over the advisability of sealing a new agreement with the West to reactivate the nuclear pact of 2015, and with the presidential elections in the middle of June.

Rohani himself has interpreted that it is about "creating discord within" Iran just as the Vienna talks "were approaching success." Given the opacity of the Iranian regime, it is difficult to decipher the intent of the leak. For some analysts, it is about discrediting Zarif in the public eye (amid rumors about whether he will be a candidate). In fact, conservatives have called for his resignation and accuse him of endangering national security by revealing the intricacies of the country's politics. Others, however, assure that it seeks to exonerate him from the failures in foreign policy and favors him.

Arash Azizi, author of

The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the US and Iran's Global Ambitions,

acknowledges in an exchange of messages that the broadcast of the audio can both benefit and harm Zarif, which "makes it very difficult" to identify the person responsible. "The whole [official] image that 'Soleimani and Zarif are united' and that 'Iran's objectives are the same, in Syria or in the nuclear agreement' has been shattered," notes the historian, however, who in his The book already echoed the tensions between the minister and the general.

The author of the interview with Zarif, for his part, does not want to discuss the matter. "No comment", answers the questions of who has leaked it and if it benefits or harms the head of diplomacy. Leylaz admits, however, that "diplomacy is the natural continuation of foreign policy." For this reason, he explains, "Zarif sent a letter to the supreme leader, five or six days ago, in which he assures that he is not going to stand in the elections and asks him to support the negotiators in Vienna so that they can do their job." The letter, to which the Iranian media has referred without revealing its entire content, comes at a time when detractors of the nuclear agreement once again label Zarif and his team "traitors", as they already did before the 2015 pact. .

Leylaz, a reformist arrested after the 2009 protests and sentenced to nine years in prison that he did not serve, defends in a telephone conversation that "there is no ideological or strategic obstacle" to reaching an understanding in Vienna. In his opinion, the main Iranian political tendencies (moderate, conservative, ultra-conservative) agree on their need. "The problem is that everyone wants to score the goal," he says. Even so, he considers it possible that it will be achieved before the presidential elections. "As Rohaní cannot stand in the elections again, if he gets the agreement, it will not be a triumph for him, but for the Islamic Republic," he concludes.

Not everyone agrees. The head of the Judiciary and potential candidate of the conservatives, Ebrahim Raisi, considers the dialogue "useless" for Washington to lift the sanctions. Added to the skepticism that the US arouses after the abandonment of the nuclear pact during the presidency of Donald Trump is the pride that the regime did not succumb to its policy of maximum pressure. "Abandon the Vienna talks, suspend all nuclear commitments, retaliate against Israel," animated an editorial in the daily

Kayhan, a

spokesperson for the ultra sectors, after the sabotage of the Natanz plant.

In the end, Azizi recalls, "the last word in negotiations is always held by the supreme leader, but he usually takes into account internal struggles." On this occasion, he made it clear in advance to both

hawks

and moderates that Iran will only fully comply with what was signed in 2015 if the Biden Administration takes the first step and lifts all sanctions, and that there will be no discussions with Western powers outside of the nuclear dossier. They are just the two obstacles that have arisen in Vienna, where the Iranian team has called for the removal not only of the sanctions for the atomic program but also those related to terrorism and human rights, and rejects the European attempt to include in the debate to Iran's neighboring countries (who want to talk about their missiles and their support for armed groups in the region).