Ayatollah Protests

The popular perception in the West is that Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (above), leads Tehran's hardliners against the administration of President Hassan Rouhani, particularly when it comes to the negotiations between Iran and the P5+ 1 group over Iran's nuclear program.

It is also claimed that Khamenei's apparent endorsement of the negotiations is only to prove his claim that the United States is not really interested in reaching an agreement with Iran, and that the Islamic Republic has the sincere upper hand.

But is it this true that Khamenei supports the hardliners in their opposition to the proposed nuclear deal? Accumulated evidence and Khamenei's own words and deeds suggest otherwise.

It is true that Iran's hardliners consider the Geneva Accord between Iran and the P5+ 1 group as an "extraordinarily bad deal" because, they claim, Iran made many concessions, but received very little in return. After the negotiations were extended on Nov. 24 for another seven months, the hardliners intensified their attacks on the Rouhani administration.

Iran's hardliners oppose the West ideologically, reject liberal democracy, and advocate Islamic fundamentalism. Opposing the West, and in particular the United States, is part of their identity. At the same time, the U.S. crippling economic sanctions against Iran has created many fundamentalist billionaires in Iran and, thus, lifting the sanctions will hurt them. A nuclear agreement with the West will also marginalize the fundamentalists in the political arena.

A good example of Iran's fundamentalists is Hossein Shariatmadari, the managing editor of Kayhan, the mouthpiece of the hardliners. He is a Khamenei appointee, and many believe that he reflects Khamenei's views. In his editorial of Nov. 23 Shariatmadari declared, "Achieving an agreement that would end the 14-year-old confrontation is not only unexpected, but also impossible."

In another editorial on Nov. 25, Shariatmadari triumphantly declared that the extension showed that he was right all along. He attacked President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, and declared that the only tangible result of the negotiations has been the proof that the United States, as a "racketeer government," cannot be trusted, and that the Geneva Accord was a bad deal for Iran.