Together We Stand, Divided We Fall: How the Crisis Precipitated By the Fall of Nuclear Deal has Brought Iran’s Squabbling Factions Together

When Tehran’s Grand Bazaar went on a strike on June 25, protesting against the economic crisis, especially the freefall of Iranian currency rial — which led to dramatic rise in prices and made imports calamitously expensive — the prophets of doom, especially in certain Arab capitals and Israel, began to pronounce the imminent collapse of the Islamic Republic. The Israel media was effusive in celebrating that protesting Iranians were shouting ‘Death to Palestine,’ and ‘Death to Syria,’ mounting pressure on Islamic Republic to scale down its expensive geopolitical ventures that have created much anxiety in Tel Aviv. The clerical regime has been in been fire-fighting mode since last December, when multi-city protests against rising costs of living claimed dozens of life, but the strike by bazaari was interpreted as a major game-changer, given the fact that the mobilisation of Iran’s bazaari, the traditional merchant class, has been central to all the popular rebellions in the twentieth century. However, most analysts seemed to gloss over the fact that it was the clerical-bazaari alliance that played the crucial role in the Islamic revolution against the West backed monarchy and, in the Islamic Republic, bazaar has become ‘complementary to the state,’ as a sober analysis by Arshin Adib-Moghaddam pointed out. As the government sought to cope up with the foreign exchange situation by acting on its notion of ‘resistance economy’ and banned imports of over 1,300 products that could instead be produced within the country, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei struck a more belligerent note, calling on the judiciary to confront those who ‘disrupt economic security.’

The discourse of economic war and resistance economy has been used by the clerical leadership to securitise the economic situation, and shield the regime from popular criticism. But the litany of protests all over Iran — latest being protests over water shortage and pollution in the Arab dominated oil rich Abadan — have shown that the people are not willing to buy the government narrative that squarely blames Iran’s enemies for country’s deep seated economic malaise. At a time, when the hopes of economic revival that the nuclear deal with the P5+1 generated, have been dashed, Iranians, especially youth, are frustrated with a regime that is invested in costly geopolitical games in the Arab world, and has failed to deliver either jobs or freedom. Yet, the Islamic Republic is not headed for collapse, as Iran’s political elites seem to be joining ranks to avoid any crisis from within which can be exploited by hostile external powers.

The moderate President Rouhani has been under attack from the conservatives, who have tried to corner his administration for trusting United States in the nuclear deal and for failing to deliver on the economic front. The conservative support for December 2017 protests indicated that they were seeking to exploit popular frustration to make a political comeback, much like Amhmadinejad’s presidential win on a hardline nationalist plank after reformist Khatami’s conciliatory foreign policy was met with Americans labelling Iran as part of ‘Axis of evil.’ But the looming total collapse of the nuclear deal owing to European inability to guarantee economic dividends promised in the deal, and the blatant American threats that it aims to reduce Iranian oil revenues to zero, have pushed Rouhani administration to take a tough-line, which is also placating his conservative and hardline detractors. The powerful Commander of the Quds force, General Qassem Soleimani threw his support for President Rouhani when the later forcefully countered the US threats. Rouhani’s statement made during his trip to Switzerland: “the Americans have claimed they want to completely stop Iran’s oil exports. They don’t understand the meaning of this statement, because it has no meaning for Iranian oil not to be exported, while the region’s oil is exported” was a thinly veiled threat that Iran would retaliate by closing down the oil lanes of Strait of Hormuz linking oil rich Gulf States to the outside world. His comments on Israel that “Iran considers the Zionist regime as illegitimate and considers its activities in the region as aggressive,” made on a European platform, were in sync with hardliners or principlists, who profess deep belief in the ideological principles of the Islamic revolution. Soleimani praised the President for his ‘timely, wise and correct comments, and underlined his preparedness to exercise any policy that is in the interest of the Islamic Republic.’ The show of unity between the government and the Revolutionary Guards is significant especially, given that Rouhani has repeatedly criticised the guards for its tight grip on the economy, making it difficult for the private sector to flourish. Rouhani’s calls for national unity seem to be working at a time when America is beating the drums of regime change in Iran. Mujahiddin-e-Khalq, an exiled Iranian resistance group dedicated to regime change in Iran is finding favours with a US administration filled with Iran hawks. Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and former House speaker and Trump advisor Newt Gingrich were speakers at the ‘Free Iran’ event organised in Paris on June 30th. National security adviser John Bolton, though he wasn’t at the rally this year, has also endorsed the group’s push for regime change in Iran. MEK, which resorted to terror after its fallout with clerical leadership and was based in Iraq from where it supported Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war carries little legitimacy in Iran, and therefore is forcing Iran’s factions to close their ranks against American putsch.

At a time, when the ideological legitimacy of revolutionary Islamism has been corroded by the failure in delivering economic justice and the US resolve to impose ‘highest level of economic sanctions’ to force the regime change in Iran is pushing Iran’s squabbling factions into supporting the policies and positions of the beleaguered President.

Deepika

10th July 2018