Major General Hassan Firoozabadi (C) salutes alongside other military commanders as they observe a parade commemorating the 31st anniversary of Iran-Iraq war on September 22, 2011 in Tehran, Iran. (Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images)[/caption]
After President Hassan Rouhani’s much-anticipated and much-applauded trip to the United States, there has been plenty of anxiety concerning those who might seek to derail the process of possible détente between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In this context, everyone watched closely as Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the UN General Assembly earlier this week. Sure enough, Netanyahu made it clear he has not yet come to believe that Rouhani is sincere, and that he remains suspicious of the ongoing Iranian charm offensive. He urged President Obama to tread carefully as he wrestles with Rouhani’s pledge to start a new chapter in Iran’s nuclear saga. Netanyahu’s stance, however, was hardly surprising to anyone who has followed Netanyahu’s decades-long passion to thwart Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
But Netanyahu is not the only one who fears an Obama–Rouhani understanding. A number of stakeholders inside the Iranian regime are worried about what a US–Iran rapprochement would mean for them and their interests. This group of skeptics is at the moment lead by the generals from the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).
The IRGC generals are wary about Rouhani’s end-game, and they do not seem to care much for the fact that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has implicitly backed Iran’s latest overtures toward Washington. They have not condemned Rouhani outright, but signs of anger are aplenty. The IRGC boss, Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, rebuked Rouhani for his phone conversation with President Obama, which the general called a “tactical mistake,” but he stopped short of attacking Rouhani. Elsewhere, other IRGC generals have been busy issuing warnings about falling for the American “smile” and “handshake,” and instead keep propagating the notion that the strategy of “resistance” against the United States is the way forward for Iran.
The trouble is that the “resistance” argument is wearing very thin, with an Iranian public that faces plummeting economic conditions thanks to years of painful international sanctions. The public mood in Iran unsurprisingly yearns for a return to the normalcy of the pre-sanctions era. And in that regard, the fixation of the IRGC generals with resisting all things American does not appeal beyond a narrow band of die-hard and often IRGC-affiliated supporters.
Rouhani’s phone conversation with Obama is part of a broader trend toward breaking the taboo of speaking to Americans and the government in Washington. For too long, Iranians were told that negotiating with Washington was tantamount to treason. This argument is long past its sell-by-date, and more and more voices in Tehran are stating this fact outright—a rarity only a few years ago.
It might soon be open season for those want to take the IRGC to task for its blind anti-Americanism. On October 3, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Rouhani’s mentor and arguably the regime’s most successful kingmaker of the last thirty-four years, pushed the envelope further. The Iranian Students’ News Agency ran an article with quotes from Rafsanjani that are bound to incite a sharp reaction.
According to Rafsanjani, back in the 1980s Grand Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic who died in 1989, had agreed that the regime would drop the practice of “chanting ‘Death to America.’” Whether Rafsanjani is seeking to rewrite history and put words in the mouth of a man who has been dead for twenty-four years is up for debate. What is certain is that the logic behind anti-Americanism is today under scrutiny in Tehran as never before.
All views expressed in this blog post are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, The Majalla magazine.
