President Hassan Rouhani was elected as the moderate candidate, who promised to resolve the nuclear dispute with the West, and bring a measure of greater social and cultural freedom to Iran.

Yet mass protests triggered in December 2017 were directed at the economic policies taken by the government and represented some of the toughest domestic challenges to the Iran state in years. Furthermore, arrests of critics and dissidents continue. Sporadic crackdowns on women and youth occur. RSF has described Iran as “one of the world’s biggest prisons for journalists”. The Islamic Republic keeps a tight grip on all its media outlets and the persecution of journalists has only increased in recent months. A state announcement this year of a national security criminal investigation and asset-freezing injunction targeting 152 current and former BBC Persian staff, has led to the BBC appealing to the UN to protect the rights of its journalists and families.

Nevertheless, Rouhani’s supporters argue he must gain credibility through successful nuclear negotiations before he can bring about any domestic reforms, particularly in light of the forces in Iran anxious to demonstrate their continued strength on the world stage. While his year has been a mixed picture, some argue his mandate has always only been to ease the country’s economic pain by rolling back sanctions: greater rights and freedoms at home have never been a priority.

Chair

Azadeh Moaveni is lecturer in journalism at New York University in London, former Middle East correspondent for Time magazine and the Los Angeles Times and author of Lipstick Jihad and Honeymoon in Tehran. Her research focuses on how political instability impacts women, and she is writing a book about women and ISIS.

Speakers

Saeed Kamali Dehghan is a staff journalist with the Guardian. He has previously written from the Iranian capital, Tehran. He is now based in London and was named 2010 Journalist of the Year at the Foreign Press Association awards.

Richard Zaghari-Ratcliffe is husband of charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian dual citizen who has been detained in Iran since 3 April 2016. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, travelled to Iran on 17 March 2016 to visit her family with her 22-month-old daughter Gabriella. On 3 April 2016, members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard arrested her at the Imam Khomeini Airport as she and daughter were about to board a flight back to the UK. On 10 September 2016, it was revealed that she was sentenced to five years imprisonment “for allegedly plotting to topple the Iranian regime”.  on 7 May 2016, Richard launched an online petition urging both the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Iran’s Supreme Leader to take appropriate action to secure the safe return of his wife and daughter Gabriella. Ratcliffe’s petition has been signed by over 1.5 million supporters in over 155 countries.

Kasra Naji is special correspondent for BBC Persian TV and author of Ahmedinejad: The Secret History of Iran’s Radical Leader.

Charlotte Phillips is a lawyer and freelance writer (The New Arab and anonymously for a national paper). She recently returned to London after spending the past 2.5 years living in Iran and completing a masters degree at the University of Tehran.  During this time she travelled widely throughout the country and in 2016 joined the 22 million Shia making the annual 82km pilgrimage from Najaf to Karbala, Iraq for the observation of Arba’een. Charlotte recently defended her thesis on Iran’s water governance crisis, which is presently being turned into a book. She is also writing a second book on Iran’s popular music scene. Charlotte is currently visiting Iran and will be back just in time to discuss the local reaction to Trump’s announcement regarding the JCPOA.

On Wednesday 2 September 2015, the Frontline Club hosted a debate on what the recent Iran nuclear agreement could mean for the country, the region and relations with the West. Just a few hours before the event, it was announced that President Obama had secured enough support in the Senate to ensure that the deal will go into effect, after Democrat Barbara Mikulski of Maryland became the 34th senator to deem it the “best option available to block Iran from having a nuclear bomb.” The agreement itself means a trade-off between Western powers, who will suspend economic sanctions on Iran providing that the regime limits the country’s nuclear programme.

L to R: Con Coughlin, Kasra Naji, Azadeh Moaveni, James Rubin and Saeed Kamali Dehghan

Hosting the panel of experts was Azadeh Moaveni, a former Middle East correspondent for Time magazine, who was joined by Kasra Naji, special correspondent for BBC Persian TV; Saeed Kamali Dehghan, staff journalist with the Guardian writing on Iran; James Rubin, a US foreign policy specialist who previously served under President Clinton as assistant secretary of state for public affairs; and Con Coughlin, The Telegraph‘s defence editor.

Dehghan began his opening remarks by expressing support for the Iran agreement: “When I was in Iran, I never thought that in my life I would see an Iranian foreign minister talking to a US Secretary of State, and now it’s part of the routine.”

He also drew comparisons between the Iran deal and the infamous Dreyfus affair in France, an espionage scandal which divided many families and society itself: “I think that Iran’s nuclear deal is Iran’s Dreyfus moment, albeit in the 21st century… It’s interesting in terms of how it’s dividing a nation, specifically in the US.” He then asserted that the deal did not polarise opinion as much in Iran, with the majority supporting it.

Rubin responded: “From an American perspective… I think there’s been a lot of over-hyped discussion… This is an evolutionary positive arms control agreement.”

He went on to outline the uncertainty of how the deal will pan out, but gave credit to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, whose election “changed things” and enabled the agreement to come about, rather than the work of President Obama or “John Kerry’s heroics.”

Rubin also stressed that the deal does not completely prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb, and will not ultimately change Iranian foreign policy in the Middle East: “[The agreement] makes it harder for [Iran] to build a nuclear weapon if they choose to. Not impossible, but harder.”

Naji said: “By signing up in Vienna, [Iran] agreed for all intents and purposes that they will not have the capability to build a bomb… Lifting up sanctions is a big, big thing for Iran these days.” He pinpointed the reality that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khomeini knew that if sanctions were to continue, then “the whole stability of the regime was at stake.”

Naji disagreed with Rubin on Iran’s ability to obtain nuclear weapons: “It’s not enough to have enough enriched uranium… you need to put it in some kind of delivery system – all those things have not been done yet.”

Naji agreed that Iran’s main policies wouldn’t change, but highlighted that it had given up its nuclear ambitions despite strong opposition from Iranian hardliners, the consequences of which have yet to be played out in the Iranian political sphere.

L to R: Kasra Naji, Azadeh Moaveni, James Rubin

Coughlin offered his view, echoing a number of Rubin’s points: “It’s a bad deal for the West… The Iranians have a lot of influence in the verification process.”

He argued that if UN inspectors have concerns on activities going on at military bases linked to the nuclear programme, Iran decides whether their complaints are justified. “I think the really big problem… is the message it’s sending out… What is this deal going to do to the other Arab powers in the region?”

Moaveni steered the discussion towards the alternatives, asking: “Would no deal have been better, and where would that have left us?”

Rubin responded that it would not take much effort to know if Iran is breaking the terms of the nuclear agreement, but that: “It’s harder than you think to get a better deal… They spent billions and billions of dollars on this capability to enrich uranium and we couldn’t get them to give it up completely.”

Deghlani also stepped in and disagreed with Rubin’s view that Obama’s election was not as important as Rouhani’s in making the deal a reality.

The discussion then moved to Iran itself, and how different factions in the country view the deal.

Naji said: “The hardliners have been forced to give up something big… but they’re not going to relent on other issues.” He then emphasised that their foreign policy will also remain firmly unchanged, and that the decision to limit their nuclear activity was a “pretty popular thing,” enabling Rouhani to fulfil an electoral promise.

The Saudi Arabian position vis-a-vis the Iran deal was touched upon, with Moaveni raising questions on how to tackle the Saudi-Iran rivalry in the aftermath of the nuclear deal. Coughlin briefly said: “Saudi Arabia would be a lot less agitated [by the deal] if they didn’t see the Iranian Revolutionary Guard backing the Houthi rebels [in Yemen].”

Dehghan commented on the reaction on the ground in Iran to the agreement, highlighting that many human rights activists supported the deal, especially considering the crippling impact of sanctions on ordinary Iranians: “From an American perspective, it might be an overstatement, but from an Iranian perspective, this is very important.”

An audience member asked: “Did you think Europe had a part to play?”

Coughlin responded: “I do think this deal was actually a deal between Washington and Tehran… The American president has had a dialogue with the regime since he came to power.” He then suggested Europe had “capitulated” and that “we are bit players…[who had] completely given into the Americans.”

Rubin disagreed: “I don’t think that sanctions would have bitten in terms of the financial and corporate sanctions and restrictions and overall effect without the Europeans.” He added: “You call it ‘capitulation’, I kinda call it ‘realism’.”

More heated debate arose when another audience member asked: “Why is it a better bet for us to ally with Qatar and Saudi Arabia… than it is to deal with a country like Iran?”

Coughlin replied: “My argument has been that we have traditional allies in the Gulf, who for the last thirty or forty years have secured our energy supplies. We’d be rather bonkers to just let them float in the wind because of this half-baked deal that Obama’s drawn out.”

Finally, when the possibility of Iran becoming an US ally was considered, Rubin said: “I know President Obama does talk about Iran’s ability to become a regional power, but an ally of the United States given the policies they pursue? Whether it’s in Damascus, whether it’s in Lebanon, whether it’s towards Israel… [Iran] do believe Israel shouldn’t exist… Would America want to be an ally of Iran? No, I don’t think so.”

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/iran-a-new-chapter

In June 2013, Hassan Rouhani was elected president of Iran, running with a mandate of “moderation and wisdom”. He promised to free political prisoners and guarantee civil rights, to return “dignity to the nation”.

He has also made promises of reform, of saving the economy and working to lift international sanctions by ending the nuclear standoff. But in a country where the elected leader is overshadowed by the unelected Supreme Leader and the Council of Guardians, will Rouhani be able to bring about effective change?

As dialogue with the US and other world powers continues to improve, we will be exploring the changes this new leader is enacting both on the international stage and within Iran.

Chaired by Elizabeth Palmer, CBS News correspondent.

The panel:

Ramita Navai is a British-Iranian Emmy award winning foreign affairs journalist. She has reported from over 30 countries and has made 20 documentaries for Channel 4’s critically acclaimed current affairs series Unreported World. She was the Tehran correspondent for The Times from 2003-2006 and she has reported for the United Nations in Iran, Pakistan and Iraq. Her first book, City of Lies, about Tehran, will be published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 2014.

Sir Richard Dalton was British ambassador to Iran 2002-2006 and is associate fellow, Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House.

Kelly Golnoush Niknejad is founder and editor-in-chief of the award-winning Tehran Bureau, which is hosted by The Guardian. She is also the inaugural recipient of the Innovator Award from Columbia Journalism School for “inspiring, creating, developing, or implementing new ideas that further the cause of journalism”.

Arron Reza Merat was formally The Economist‘s Tehran correspondent and is currently working on Iran at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Shashank Joshi is a Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and a doctoral student of international relations at Harvard University’s Department of Government. He specialises in international security in South Asia and the Middle East.

The election of cleric Hassan Rouhani to Iran’s presidency last week has Iranians and the world turning their heads to wonder: is the Islamic Republic changing direction? Will Rouhani’s promised pragmatism and reform replace the hardline conservatism of incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

An expert panel convened at the Frontline Club  on 26 June, to probe for answers.

Saeed Barzin and Mark Fitzpatrick. Credit: Jim Treadway

CBS Correspondent Elizabeth Palmer, chair for the discussion, observed:

“He’s [Rouhani] had a career which has kept him at the very core of power, very close to the Supreme Leader. So it’s hard to imagine that he will be a radical reformer. And yet, at certain stages in his career he has shown that he is a pragmatist, that he is capable of being flexible.”

During his campaign, Rouhani promised greater engagement with the West while urging the world to “acknowledge the rights” of Iran. His primary promise was to try to ease sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear program.

Meanwhile, as Arab Spring upheavals echo across the region, panelists saw the election as a sign that Tehran is tuning in acutely to the demands of the people. Author and journalist Azadeh Moaveni asserted:

“I see Iran changing, and I see the prospects for Iran changing from below. [It] feels differently inside the country. . .  This is a break from the police state atmosphere of the last 8 years, which has just been suffocating.”

Saeed Barzin, a longtime Iran analyst now with BBC Persian, agreed:

“What I learned from the elections is that Iranians are getting [ready] for change. That is quite clear in the way that the establishment behaved, the way that the candidates behaved, and the way that people behaved. . . . People are desperate for change. The economic situation is not good: inflation, unemployment, the value of the national currency. But, they want gradual change. They don’t want…a Libya scenario. They don’t want an Egyptian story. They want their new TV at the end of summer, and they want a new fridge for their children . . . gradual, calculated, reasonable, common sense change, and this is what indeed Mr Rouhani is representing.”

“One phrase which did not occur in this election, strikingly, was ‘Islamic Awakening’,” reflected Scott Lucas, a professor at the University of Birmingham and editor-in-chief of EA WorldView.

L-R: Elizabeth Palmer, Azadeh Moaveni, Scott Lucas. Credit: Jim Treadway

Barzin added: “The faction which was defeated in these elections was what I call the right wing of the establishment…which initially brought Ahmadinejad to power.”

With 72% of eligible voters casting ballots, Rouhani won just over 50% of the vote, while his nearest rival, conservative Tehran Mayor Mohammad Qalibaf, received only 16%, and hardliner favorite Saeed Jalili received 11%.

So, will Tehran’s tenor change in nuclear negotiations with the United States? Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, commented:

“The [current] nuclear negotiating team was criticizing Rouhani during the election, so they’re all out. But, that’s only a handful of people. My read is that Rouhani will probably bring in more pragmatists, as opposed to hardliners.”

Watch the event here or listen/download the podcast:

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/iranafterahmedinejad