Media Watch: With the 24 November deadline looming for nuclear agreement with world powers, there is nervousness in Tehran as fundamentalists step up attacks on the talks and on Iran’s negotiators

As talks between Tehran and world powers near a 24 November deadline for an agreement over Iran’s controversial nuclear programme, the fundamentalist media in Iran have ramped up their efforts to undermine negotiations and bolster their position on the domestic scene.



Leading the charge has been Kayhan, the most influential newspaper on the authoritarian right and edited by Hossein Shariatmadari, an appointee of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. A few days after the mid-term congressional elections in the United States, Kayhan ran an article dismissing as “pointless” the change of venue for the nuclear negotiations to Oman, where back-channel talks in 2013 between the US and Iran helped pave the way for the interim Geneva agreement.



Kayhan called US policy “war-seeking” and described Obama as a “scarecrow” who was in no position to make an agreement. The article concluded that “a deal with the US has been an illusion from the very beginning.”



A reformist journalist in Tehran gave Tehran Bureau an interpretation: “The defeat of the Democrats in the US mid-term elections gave Shariatmadari’s team a chance to label Obama as an ineffectual ‘scarecrow’, something which is in line with their more general strategy of convincing Khamenei that even if Iran should reach a strong agreement with Obama’s government, the inevitable power shift after the next US presidential elections will make all these efforts fruitless. This is the current tactic to disrupt and delegitimise the negotiations in Muscat [in Oman].”



On October 29 Vatan, a newspaper owned by Mehrdad Bazrpash, a confidant of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, attacked the media for paying too little attention to the nuclear talks. Vatan contributor Amir Ali Jahandar predicted that a “harmful agreement” was looming, with the public distracted by presumably more frivolous topics like the recent acid attacks on women in Iran.



“Beyond our borders there is a wealth of news regarding the negotiations, an issue which unfortunately remains far from the minds of the people at present. This news speaks of the current round of negotiations which...could result in an agreement that would be detrimental in every sense of the word and further endanger Iran’s national rights. In all of this, it is crucial that revolutionary media correctly interpret the news they receive and refrain from publishing items simply for their exciting content.”



More recently, Vatan published an article snidely suggesting the negotiations were simply a means for foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his lackeys to preserve positions within Iran’s political system: “Those brave and sombre actors currently shouldering the task of the nuclear negotiations, in order to remain active on the domestic scene and further obscure their affinity for the west with smoke and mirrors, will submit to an agreement at any cost, so long as it does not affect their domestic brand.”



But this article, contrary to the earlier one, goes on to suggest there is no chance of an agreement. “The red line that has been drawn by the supreme leader can only be changed by the leader himself. The leader has also consistently shown that in implementing the country’s broader policies - something which is his legal and divine right - he considers the interests of the country above all personal and material considerations. There is indeed no cause for worry that this red line will be crossed, for there are forces at home with whom these rational actors wouldn’t want to find themselves at odds.”



This was apparently a rebuttal to Alireza Zakani, a fundamentalist member of parliament from Tehran, who had warned the assembly of “a possibly tacit crossing of the red line that will undoubtedly lead to a defeat for Iran’s national rights and a serious setback for our many nuclear achievements thus far.”



Also responding to Zakani’s remarks has been Marzieh Afkham, foreign ministry spokeswoman. She insisted that “the negotiation team is completely aware of the red line and is acting with care and sensitivity to respect it”. She implicitly threatened Zakani with legal action over his “smear” and accused him of being “disrespectful of the broader effort by the country’s leadership to improve the situation at home for all Iranians.”



But no matter how often Zarif and his team have insisted they have kept Ayatollah Khamenei informed throughout the negotiations, the media barrage has continued.



Ramze Obour, a fundamentalist weekly magazine, also took up the idea of Iran’s negotiators as thespians, headlining a special report on the negotiations “The actors and their final mission”.



This explicitly targeted former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is close to president Hassan Rouhani and many of the Iranian negotiating team, and rings with a desire to settle old, lingering scores.



“In the past few years, Mr Rafsanjani has always talked about a letter he wrote in 1988 to Imam [Ruhollah] Khomeini [supreme leader until his death in 1989] in which he beseeched the founder of the Islamic Revolution to solve the problem of Iran’s relations with the US during his lifetime, arguing that no one else would be able to do so after his death. Even in the aftermath of the weak agreement reached in Geneva during the first 100 days of Rouhani’s presidency [the November 2013 interim agreement], which has resulted in an overall loss for the country and has even made the negotiators’ job more difficult, Mr Rafsanjani holds on to this cherished memory. It seems as though his only wish - or perhaps, it could be said, his sole mission in life - is to see Iran in a permanent relationship with the US.”



A member of Moharekat (Participation Front), the main reformist political party, told Tehran Bureau these fundamentalist attacks were predictable and cautioned against exaggerating their importance.



“This is all very natural. They are betting on the eventual paralysis of the Rouhani government, and their most important card is his defeat in these nuclear negotiations. They know that if the negotiations fail, further sanctions will kick in, economic stagnation will worsen, and they will reap the benefits of widespread public disenchantment.”



But the Mosharekat member insisted the fundamentalists were not driving the process. “These articles don’t really bear on the decisions of the current government. The main deciders are Ayatollah Khamenei, president Rouhani, the higher-ups at the Revolutionary Guards, and maybe [parliamentary speaker] Ali Larijani. The big decisions simply aren’t made or even affected by the fundamentalist press.”



But there is nervousness in Tehran. A year ago, Ayatollah Khamenei came out in strong support of the negotiating team during a speech on the anniversary of the storming of the US embassy in Tehran. Now, as the November deadline draws ever nearer, Khamenei’s website has published an expression of thanks to the leader from deputy foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, for his “effective and heartwarming” support, and a Twitter account associated with the leader has expressed support for “innovative diplomacy in foreign policy and international affairs”. But Khamenei himself has maintained a silence.