{"id":465061,"date":"2020-06-15T17:32:25","date_gmt":"2020-06-15T17:32:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mecouncil.org\/?p=465061"},"modified":"2022-09-09T08:35:56","modified_gmt":"2022-09-09T08:35:56","slug":"what-explains-the-decline-of-irans-moderates-its-not-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/what-explains-the-decline-of-irans-moderates-its-not-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"What explains the decline of Iran\u2019s moderates? It\u2019s not Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month, Iran inaugurated a new parliament with a hardline majority<\/a> elected in a late February ballot with the lowest voter turnout since the 1979 revolution. Conservatives even swept the capital city, Tehran, while the leading moderate secured just 95,393 votes in a metropolitan area with a population of over 13 million. Why have Iran\u2019s moderates and reformists lost public support, and what will this mean for Iran\u2019s foreign policy?<\/p>\n

Conventional wisdom claims that the main cause for the moderates\u2019 declining position was U.S. pressure on the Rouhani administration, with some analysts describing Trump\u2019s \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d campaign as a gift for Iranian hardliners. In such a view<\/a>, Washington\u2019s re-imposition of sanctions gave Iran\u2019s hardliners \u201cwhat they wanted\u201d and \u201cby putting the hardliners in the driver\u2019s seat in Tehran, Trump made the current crisis inevitable.\u201d This argument also credits<\/a> U.S. pressure with strengthening \u201cthe hand of hardline Iranian factions, in the clerical and judicial establishment as well as in the Revolutionary Guards.\u201d In the same vein, forecasts for Iran\u2019s 2021 presidential election<\/a> insist that the White House\u2019s policies have created \u201cimpossible circumstances\u201d for a reformist candidate to win. These facile explanations disregard Iran\u2019s internal politics and vastly overstate the importance of Washington to shaping outcomes within Iran.<\/p>\n

MODERATES WEAKENED BY DOMESTIC FACTORS<\/h1>\n

It is simplistic to attribute the weakening of Iran\u2019s moderates to Trump\u2019s pressure policy. Indeed, there are significant domestic factors. First, 10 months before Trump decided to withdraw the U.S. from the nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA), Rouhani\u2019s choice of second-term cabinet members turned out to be quite conservative, contrary to his supporters\u2019 expectations. For instance, Rouhani failed to fulfill promises to choose a woman<\/a> for at least one ministry, disappointing crucial constituents.<\/p>\n

In fact, the nationwide uprising in early 2018 (referred to in Iran as the Dey protests) in about a hundred cities and towns \u2014 i.e. five months before Trump exited the deal and re-imposed sanctions \u2014 constituted a turning point in Iranians\u2019 views toward the moderate faction. That upheaval started out of socio-economic grievances, but it went beyond economic demands<\/a>. The majority of reformists condemned the people who took to the streets, shocking many. Hamidreza Jalaeipour, a prominent reformist activist, described protesters as \u201cvultures\u201d (karkas<\/em>); he denied having done so<\/a> after a social media backlash. Abbas Abdi, another reformist, blamed<\/a> the protests on \u201creactionary countries of the region,\u201d characterizing the protests as \u201criot and destruction\u201d that required a harsh response. And above all, a statement by the Association of Combatant Clerics headed by Mohammad Khatami, the former reformist president who is known as the leader of the reformist camp, echoed those sentiments<\/a>: \u201cThe recent tragic events in the country show that opportunists and rioters are abusing public gatherings and peaceful protests by creating chaos, insecurity, destroying public property, insulting religious and national sanctuaries, and even killing innocent people. They pursue the filthy intention of enemies.\u201d Such condemnations intensified when people began chanting: \u201cReformist, hardliner, the game is now over.\u201d<\/p>\n

These reactions prompted many Iranians to move away from the moderates. According to Sadegh Zibakalam, a prominent University of Tehran politics professor, \u201cthe reputation of reformists<\/a> has gone with the Dey protests,\u201d turning them into the \u201cbig losers\u201d of those protests. In another interview<\/a>, he said that the reformists have not had a \u201cspecific strategy for the last 22 years\u201d and \u201cnow reforms died<\/a>.\u201d In other words, while moderates have long emphasized their support for civil society, many saw their reactions to the Dey protests as similar to the hardliners\u2019. In this context, Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, a top reformist activist, acknowledged:<\/a> \u201cI agree that reformists who taste power, sometimes become conservative, and this conservatism is a plague of reformism.\u201d \u00a0In this vein, Mohammad-Reza Khatami, a reformist member of Iran\u2019s outgoing parliament (former president Khatami\u2019s brother), said<\/a> that reformists are the \u201csafety valve\u201d of the Islamic Republic, adding: \u201cPeople\u2019s hopes in the reformists are diminishing day by day.\u201d Many Iranians have become frustrated with their choice in recent years to vote for moderates \u201cto achieve peace and tranquility.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the Dey protests and the reformists\u2019 reactions illustrate, domestic factors rather than U.S. pressure are more significant for explaining the moderates\u2019 weakness. Their poor performance in office (during the Khatami and Rouhani administrations) has hurt their popularity, as they failed to deliver on key political and economic promises.<\/p>\n

ROLE OF MODERATES IN IRAN\u2019S FOREIGN POLICY<\/h1>\n

How does the weakening of the moderate establishment impact Iranian foreign policy, particularly relations with Washington? It\u2019s tempting to presume that the rise of Iranian hardliners will intensify U.S.-Iran tensions, as \u201cvoices against the deal<\/a> in Iran will strengthen, and those who favor a more confrontational policy toward Washington will once again have the wind in their sails.\u201d However, this assumes that the nuclear deal \u2014 a major diplomatic breakthrough that pulled the relationship back from the brink of war \u2014 was driven to a significant degree by Iran\u2019s moderates. That\u2019s a superficial read of Iranian internal dynamics; in fact, in many instances Tehran\u2019s factional differences serve a utilitarian purpose in foreign policy. As an outgoing moderate member of parliament recently acknowledged<\/a>, hardliners\u2019 harsh protests against Rouhani\u2019s d\u00e9tente policy were deployed to assist Tehran in obtaining greater concessions under the deal. And it should not be forgotten that Iran and the U.S. started secret negotiations in Oman in November 2011<\/a>, precisely when hardliners controlled both the presidency and parliament. The bottom line is that the Islamic Republic\u2019s foreign policy is not determined by its president, particularly in the context of U.S.-Iran relations. Echoing this point, Ali Motahari, a self-described nonpartisan<\/a> and longtime member of parliament who was not permitted to run in the recent election, admitted that \u201cIran is under unprecedented pressure\u201d and argued that \u201chardliners, by taking power, probably will agree with relations with the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

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WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE FUTURE OF RELATIONS WITH WASHINGTON<\/strong><\/h3>\n

After four decades, the Islamic Republic has shown that its foreign policy is largely not determined by which political faction dominates the administration or the parliament. Rather, moderates and hardliners have each played their respective roles \u2014 \u201cgood cop, bad cop.\u201d For instance, three months after his re-election in July 2017, President Rouhani met with the top Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) generals. Presidential adviser Hesamodin Ashna posted a photo of the meeting<\/a> on his Telegram channel, writing: \u201cThis is not just an image but a trajectory (masir<\/em>).\u201d In his second term, President Rouhani has tried to boost relations with conservatives and hardliners. According to Tabnak<\/em><\/a>, an influential news website close to Mohsen Rezaei, an IRGC general and secretary of the Expediency Discernment Council, Rouhani\u2019s willingness to get closer to the conservatives \u201ccan save his influence after the presidency as an effective actor in Iran\u2019s politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, Tehran\u2019s official line is that it pursues a strategy to confront what it sees as a U.S.-led world order. But if the need arose, the Islamic Republic might opt for more accommodating positions, such as those that helped lead to the nuclear negotiations. Such shifts were not the result of the \u201cmoderating\u201d influence of Iran\u2019s reformist camp. In fact, merely because of their international prestige, they played their role amid an Iranian national security strategy to reduce threats by negotiation.<\/p>\n

Far too many explanations for the moderates\u2019 weakness and their role in Iranian foreign policy have relied on the \u201cTrump factor,\u201d thus neglecting the crucial role of domestic political dynamics in the Islamic Republic. Those domestic factors have and will continue to be the driving force.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month, Iran inaugurated a new parliament with a hardline majority elected in a late February ballot with the lowest voter turnout since the 1979 revolution. Conservatives even swept the capital city, Tehran, while the leading moderate secured just 95,393 votes in a metropolitan area with a population of over 13 million. Why have Iran\u2019s… Continue reading What explains the decline of Iran\u2019s moderates? It\u2019s not Trump<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":465067,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"publication_archive_type":[297],"class_list":["post-465061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","publication_archive_type-issue-brief","entry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465061"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":465069,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465061\/revisions\/465069"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465061"},{"taxonomy":"publication_archive_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication_archive_type?post=465061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}