Foreign policy of Pezeshkian hostage in the hands of Paydari
Foreign policy of Pezeshkian hostage in the hands of Paydari
In a move that once again demonstrates the enduring power of groups opposing Iran’s rapprochement with the West, hardline factions in Iran recently removed the Minister of Economy and the Deputy for Strategic Affairs of the Presidency from the government. One of the individuals who still holds influence in the Islamic Republic is Saeed Jalili, who has been defeated three times in presidential elections.
Jalili, who was injured in the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988, has held positions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the office of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, and was the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council for six years, an institution considered the highest authority for decision-making and implementing security policies in Iran.
During this period, from 2007 to 2013, under the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Jalili was also Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator with world powers but failed to reach an agreement or prevent the passage of several UN Security Council resolutions against Iran.
Iran only managed to achieve the nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in 2015 after Jalili and Ahmadinejad left power and during the presidency of Hassan Rouhani, who himself was a nuclear negotiator during Khatami’s era. During Rouhani’s presidency, Jalili formed a shadow government consisting of about 20 task forces that sought to influence and weaken the government’s policies.
Jalili and his supporters played a prominent role in preventing the passage of laws aligned with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an organization based in Paris that combats money laundering and terrorist financing.
After the JCPOA agreement, the Rouhani government hoped to increase foreign investment in Iran’s economy by getting Iran off the FATF blacklist and benefiting from further sanction relief. Mostafa Pourmohammadi, one of the candidates for the 2024 presidential elections, revealed in a televised debate that Jalili had told him that accepting the FATF was only possible under a hardliner government, but if the Rouhani government was responsible, they would not accept it.
After the U.S. exit from the JCPOA during Trump’s first presidency, Saeed Jalili tried to convince the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei to also abandon the agreement. In January 2022, he wrote a letter to Iran’s leader asking him to withdraw Iran from the 2015 agreement and increase uranium enrichment to 90 percent or weapon-grade level.
Iran had previously raised enrichment levels to 60 percent in 2021 following Israeli sabotage at the main Natanz enrichment facility.
While Iran was engaged in negotiations to revive the JCPOA, Jalili influenced these efforts. The negotiations failed for various reasons, including new Russian intervention following its extensive invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Efforts to reach a new agreement remain uncertain. On March 2, Mohammad Javad Zarif, the former Foreign Minister and chief negotiator of the JCPOA, resigned from his position as Deputy for Strategic Affairs of the Presidency.
Zarif was forced to step down under pressure from conservatives who considered him too close to the West. Reformist parties in the Islamic Republic of Iran are generally weak because there is a fear that they might become anti-government tools of civil society.
However, this does not apply to hardline groups, even when their candidates repeatedly lose in elections. One such group is the Paydari Front, which operated for years under the leadership of Ayatollah Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, known for his anti-democratic views.
The Paydari Front defends so-called revolutionary values and seeks to implement conservative cultural policies, including strict restrictions on media and art. For example, this group has promoted a bill called the Protection Plan, which severely limits Iranians’ access to the global internet.
This bill was temporarily shelved due to widespread criticism but only after the Paydari Front made significant efforts to pass it.
The bill was presented to the relevant commission in 2021 based on a clause that allows parliamentary commissions to pass laws in emergency situations.
At that time, Morteza Agha-Tehrani, the former Secretary-General of the Paydari Front, chaired this commission.
In a speech during the consideration of the bill, he said, ‘I was insulted 20,000 times and 120,000 pages were written against us, but even if 100 billion pages are created against us, we will still do our work because we believe in the path we are on.’