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In Iran, Mainly Praise for Nuclear Deal as a Good First Step In Iran, Mainly Praise for Nuclear Deal as a Good First Step
(about 7 hours later)
TEHRAN — As Iranians woke up Sunday to news many had never imagined they would hear, factions from across the nation’s political spectrum, including hard-liners who have preached increased isolation, said they welcomed the first nuclear deal in more than a decade between Iran and world powers. TEHRAN — The smiling started early in Tehran on Sunday, when President Hassan Rouhani kissed a young schoolgirl in an Islamic head scarf before dozens of cameras, signaling that Iran’s future had taken a new turn.
“I feel great!” said Sajad Motaharnia, an English student, who was closely following the news in his apartment in downtown Tehran. “But I’m also sad when I think how we have lived under pressure for the past 10 years because of the bad decisions of some politicians.” After years of seemingly endless bad tidings of more international sanctions, more inflation and more saber rattling, many in this capital received the news of the first nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers in more than a decade like an awakening from a bad dream, and they shared their emotions on social media.
Across the Iranian capital, people could be seen smiling and discussing the news. “The coming six months will be like a honeymoon between Iran and America,” said Ahmad Teymouresi, a maintenance worker in a building complex. “If all goes well, they will marry; if it goes wrong, there will be a divorce.” “When I checked my Instagram when I woke up, someone had posted a picture of an Iranian and American flag,” said Asal Khalilpour, 29. “After I read the comments saying a deal was made, tears started rolling down my cheeks of happiness. I couldn’t believe it.”
President Hassan Rouhani was the first Iranian politician to hail the agreement as a victory for the Islamic Republic, telling selected reporters that the deal had forced the “collapse of the sanctions regime.” People from across the Iranian political spectrum, including many hard-line commanders and clerics who had long advocated resistance and isolation from the West, told state news media on Sunday that the deal that Mr. Rouhani’s negotiating team had made was a good start.
Over the past years, as sanctions on Iran’s oil sales, financial transactions, airlines and transportation industry that were devised by the United States Treasury started to hurt, most Iranians have felt the pinch, which has been made worse by inflation and high unemployment rates. One man’s nay could have undone it all. But Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been working for some time to engineer a way out of the economic and diplomatic quagmire of sanctions. Soon after Mr. Rouhani spoke to reporters, Ayatollah Khamenei issued a short message online saying he considered the deal a success.
Mr. Rouhani said the agreement reached in the early hours on Sunday stated that “all sanctions will be lifted on a step-by-step basis as talks continue.” “The nuclear negotiating team deserves to be appreciated and thanked for its achievement,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, according to the semiofficial Fars News Agency. He added that “their behavior can be the basis of the next wise measures.”
The Iranian president, who since his inauguration in August has been promising that the differences between Iran and the West would be solved and the sanctions lifted, warned that the negotiators were only at the beginning of a long process. “We have a long way to go before there will be full confidence between Iran and other countries,” he said. Ayatollah Khamenei had spoken of negotiating directly with “the great Satan,” the Iranian ideological label for the United States, as long ago as March, three months before Mr. Rouhani was elected president promising better relations with the West. “I am not opposed,” Ayatollah Khamenei said on the subject during his annual address on the first day of the Iranian year, March 21. “But first the Americans must change their hostility towards Iran.”
In an important sign that Iran’s ruling elite is also on board with the interim deal, the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called it a “success” and praised the negotiators, led by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, a career diplomat educated in the United States. “The nuclear negotiating team deserves to be appreciated and thanked for its achievement,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, according to the semiofficial Fars News Agency. At the time, few observers thought the remark, made amid a flurry of verbal attacks on the United States, reflected a serious change in policy. But Ayatollah Khamenei apparently allowed a group of Iranian diplomats to begin secret preparatory talks with American officials in Oman, according to an Associated Press report citing American officials. He also assured that the next president of Iran would follow a line different from the prickly hostility of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose comments about Israel and the Holocaust had helped make Iran a pariah.
But some hard-liners criticized the deal, saying that the Iranian team had not won enough concessions in the negotiations. “It is clear that any international outreach could not be handled by someone like President Ahmadinejad,” said Amir Mohebbian, a political strategist who advises Iranian leaders and is often briefed on Iran’s relations with America. “I think the leader helped bring Mr. Rouhani to power to make the public ready for a policy change.”
“We had expected the U.S. to lift all sanctions,” said Hamid Reza Taraghi, a conservative political analyst who is close to Ayatollah Khamenei. Mr. Taraghi warned that, according to Iran’s Constitution, any deal between the Iranian government and foreign powers must be ratified by Parliament, which is controlled by hard-liners. “Our president is saying that everybody is winning with this deal, but we had expected more.” Noting the long friendship between Ayatollah Khamenei and Mr. Rouhani, a career diplomat, Mr. Mohebbian said that “nobody is better suited to bring Iran back to the world community than Mr. Rouhani.” He compared the handling of the talks to a construction project, with Ayatollah Khamenei as the architect and Mr. Rouhani as the contractor executing the design. “The leader has shaped this situation and paved the way for Mr. Rouhani to be the right person at the right time,” Mr. Mohebbian said
Speaking from the garden of his office in central Tehran, Mr. Rouhani brought out the relatives of five nuclear scientists who were assassinated on Tehran’s streets from 2009 to 2011 by unknown assailants. Iran has blamed Israel and the United States as being behind the assassinations. “Today we honor the bravery of our martyred nuclear scientists,” Mr. Rouhani said, kissing one of the scientists’ daughters in front of the cameras. Others in Tehran said they had had inklings of what was coming. “Rumors of secret talks started circulating in Tehran in March,” said Nader Karimi Joni, a journalist and commentator close to Mr. Rouhani’s administration. Mr. Joni said he had heard the rumors from someone in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and that although he could not confirm them at the time, “later it became clear the leader had sent trusted aides, instead of people close to Ahmadinejad, to conduct the talks.”
“The agreement is a very big deal,” said Amir Mohebbian, a political analyst who has advised many of Iran’s leaders. But he worried that the Obama administration would run into trouble with Congress over the deal. “Our leader, Khamenei, supports this agreement, which means that there will be no issues from the Iranian side,” he said. “We hope the Americans will also be able to honor their promises.” One man who was widely thought to have been involved was Ali Akbar Salehi, a foreign minister under Mr. Ahmadinejad who now heads the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. Asked on Sunday about secret negotiations in Oman, Mr. Salehi appeared surprised; he smiled and said, “You must understand that I cannot comment on this right now.”
In the early hours of Monday, an Iranian Foreign Ministry official denied the Associated Press report about secret bilateral talks, the state-controlled Islamic Republic News Agency reported. The agency said the official, whom it did not name, warned the news media against publishing reports that “would create ambiguity over Iran’s clear-cut stances.”
Whether Tehran’s change of heart about a deal with the West grew from the pain Iran felt from sanctions or a new strategic calculation about its nuclear program, one factor appears to have been the Obama administration’s publicly stated desire to resolve the issues related to the Iranian nuclear program.
Ayatollah Khamenei said in March that “the Americans constantly send us messages, telling us they are sincere.” Though the leader dismissed them in his speech as a public relations tactic, Mr. Mohebbian said, letters that Mr. Obama had sent to Ayatollah Khamenei “created the start of a better atmosphere,” and Ayatollah Khamenei responded.
After the country’s Guardian Council, which vets prospective candidates, decided on the field for the presidential race, Mr. Rouhani emerged as the only candidate who was not considered a hard-liner like Mr. Ahmedinejad. Dissatisfied middle-class Iranians who felt alienated by the intrusive security state that Iran had become flocked to Mr. Rouhani’s standard, and he won the election comfortably without a runoff.
“I am so happy I voted for Mr. Rouhani at the time,” Sajad Motaharnia, a student of English, said on Sunday as he watched a news broadcast about the nuclear agreement, which was given extensive coverage on state television. “But I’m also sad when I think how we have lived under pressure for the past 10 years because of the bad decisions of some politicians.”
Mr. Rouhani himself seemed to want to draw a line under the past, by bringing the families of Iranian nuclear scientists who were killed in recent years to his news briefing on Sunday; the schoolgirl he kissed for the cameras was the daughter of one of them, Darioush Rezai-Nejad.
Some opposition to the agreement was evident on Sunday among Iranian hard-liners. The Raja News website quoted several lawmakers warning that Parliament had the power under the country’s Constitution to ratify or reject the agreement, and that they were dissatisfied with several elements of it.
One well-known hard-liner, Hamid-Reza Taraghi, an official interpreter of Ayatollah Khamenei’s speeches, was among the skeptics, saying he was disappointed that the deal did not call for the lifting of all sanctions.
He dismissed the notion that Ayatollah Khamenei had approved secret talks between Iran and the United States. “What is clear is that the supreme leader did not agree with the way the previous negotiating team operated,” Mr. Taraghi said, referring to the Ahmedinejad administration. “But bear in mind that Ayatollah Khamenei is honest and does not believe in duplicity in politics.”