On May 28, the 10th Islamic Consultative Assembly, otherwise known as the Iranian parliament or Majlis, officially started operation. The present parliament’s role in the future course of Iranian politics is highly important and more importance is attached to it due to its makeup and its shift from the previous two parliaments.
This time the parliament is a very different formation of 290 parliamentarians because of its makeup of reformist, independent and conservative parliamentarians after the elections earlier this year.
The members were elected on February 26 initially, with a final runoff on April 29. In February, Reformist and Independent candidates swept the polls, winning over 66 percent of the total seats (42 percent for Reformist and 22.41 percent for Independent respectively). Meanwhile conservative candidates, who are called “principlists” in Iran, gained another 29% of the total seats.
The remaining seven seats were reserved for Iran’s ethnic religious minorities including Armenians, Jews, Assyrians and Zoroastrians.
This year’s Majlis was also notable for its number of women representatives, who for the first time since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 outnumber the number of seated clerics in the house.
But what counts for our concern here is the political map of the Majlis and its impact on Iran’s foreign policy. Is it was mentioned, reformists found themselves winning a landmark victory when the results were announced. The reformists are those who all through the years that Iran was struggling with sanctions called for negotiations with world powers, something that was put into practice only after their support brought Hassan Rouhani to the executive office.
Through the use of powerful negotiators such as the genius Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Rouhani administration entitled itself to the honor of having satisfied his presidential campaign vow, and realized the wish of his reformist voters.
On the other hand, although reformists are now in a better footing than the two previous mostly-rightwing parliaments, things are appearing to be different in the parliament than the reformists thought on the night of their victory. The top Tehran representative and reform hope Mohammad Reza Aref failed to secure the seat of the speaker, leaving the post for his rightwing rival Ali Larijani.
Also, the principlists found greater gain in cities other than Tehran, something they will be making full use of in the course of the parliament term. The principlists, and most of all their extreme factions, were the ones that at every turn sought to bring up the bad things that might happen to Iran if it made the nuclear deal. They virtually hesitated doing nothing to prevent the deal.
Now on one hand, there is the new vigor found in the reform camp, and their innate desire to relate to the world. This is made more likely to attain when the reformers are already in possession of the nuclear deal.
Yet, the principlist side has shown to possess more power than it just shows on the map. As an instance of this fact, this year’s Assembly of Experts elections saw 15 reform-supported ayatollahs (under the name of the List of Hope) gaining 15 out of 16 seats in the body. But it was the 16th representative, the all so principlist Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati that climbed the ladder to the chair of the assembly.
This shows that principlists in Iran have power running more in the deep than on the surface. It casts doubt on whether the Iranian nuclear deal will make much of the reform hopes come true.
Another fact is that the nuclear deal would have been impossible with all the reform hope but without a consent by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. More than often associated with the rightwing tendency, he was the pivotal point and the final key to the deal.
This could be interpreted in two ways. One is that as the leader of the counter and more so of the rightwing camp, Ayatollah Khamenei has deemed it better that the nuclear deal be driven home. So giving hope that the main body of the principlist camp is in favor of the deal and opening up to the world.
The other meaning could be that despite the reformist urge to make the deal and end the years of isolation, as well as the far rightwing fear of being cheated through the deal, Ayatollah Khamenei and those closer to him, including the Majlis speaker who is not considered as a far rightwing politician, have their own interpretation of the deal, quite different than what the reform hopes for.
In his message the clerical leader stated his wish for the MPs to “realize the resistance economy” – an economic plan set out by him to improve the state of manufacturing in the country as opposed to relying solely on imports (a security measure to keep minimum reliance on outside), and “to uphold the status of the Islamic Revolution against global arrogance and excessive demands”.
Using the term “global arrogance” Khamenei is directly referring to Western states – particularly the UK and US – and their perceived meddling in regional affairs currently and in the past.
“There are other priorities in different sections that pertain to national authority, reinforcement of security and the country’s impregnability, which guarantee the establishment of social justice, and the country’s independence and advancement,” he said, according to Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.
Also upon endorsing the nuclear deal in a message to president Rouhani, the Leader made pretty much the same points, calling for minimum reliance and the resistance economy, and emphasizing that the deal relates only to the nuclear field.
In fact the new makeup of the Majlis could be more of the victory of the moderate camp, which Rouhani has also been associating himself with. The Associated Press described the accession of Larijani as an “early victory for the moderate conservatives in the new parliament.”
Thus, his re-appointment can be just as easily interpreted as a victory for the status quo as for the moderate faction.
The status quo can again be interpreted in the worlds of Ayatollah Khamenei, that the nuclear deal could be endorsed, but never seen optimistically.
Thus, the lack of optimism that has swept the center party is what decides the course of the follow-up to the nuclear deal. That steps should be taken very slowly and only after everything has been checked. The center party of Iran has been time after time disappointed by the West, led to believe that the West is not approaching Iran with the goal to reach a win-win situation. The last example of which was Iran refraining from shipping a pile of heavy water to the United States that Washington said it wanted to buy. Iran stressed that the shipment would be sent only after full payment. This was for a great part caused by a recent US court confiscation of $1.8 billion Iranian assets on charges of supporting terrorism, which Tehran totally dismissed.
Also, although Iran and the P5+1 implemented the nuclear deal in January, Iran has seen no effect of it in the banking sector, which is necessary before Iran could actually start international business. Here Iran has accused the West, in particular the US, of not upholding the spirit of the nuclear deal.
As a result, with Iran’s center of power growing more and more pessimistic about the deal, the new parliament makeup is not likely to cause any great change in the status quo in the government’s regard for opening up to the world community.
This is true that such clear image exists of the political map of Iran. But there is a higher reality that both governmental and private sectors have made a decision to make the best of the situation that has arisen from the past two years to expand their economic relations with the world. They have decided to use at their service the very existing political powers on stage that have been acting as hindrances to Iran’s commercial approach to the world.
Some people around the world may have a hard time believing that Iran’s principlists could be flexible. The reality is that there is such vast room for how to interpret religio-political dictums in Iran that even total turnabouts should not surprise one.
Those economic bodies of the world_ American enterprises in particular_ which are looking out for expanding ties with Iran would need only to look from the viewpoint of Iranian rather than international media, no less so about the more powerful international media.
We would like to state with assurances that the Iranian polymer industry in general is now ready to start business with the entire world. This is an opportunity that should not be overlooked amid non-local media speculations.
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This Editorial is proposed on the basis of feedback from PIMI viewers, and written by “Mehdi Sepahvand”
