It has taken the ideological irresponsibility of Iran’s extreme hard right, such as the Paydari Front, to awaken other principlists to the futility—if not downright danger—of such recklessness, which masquerades as courageous adherence to ideological purity. Specifically, the less hardline principlists are pulling back from wholesale condemnation of the JCPoA and questioning Iran’s continued international isolation, and at least one of Iran’s allies is urging the country to stop isolating itself.
Ezzatollah Yusefian-Molla, a principlist former MP, explains how Iran’s economy is more prone to Western sanctions than that of isolated countries like Cuba or North Korea. (He does not explain why, but one may surmise it has to do with Iran being a great producer and exporter of energy commodities.) Regardless, as he explains, the combination of sanctions and economic mismanagement by the country’s political leaders is proving catastrophic in Iran’s case. Yusefian-Molla considers the Ra’isi administration either incapable of making a deal to ease sanctions or absolutely uninterested in doing so. Even if the administration wanted nothing to do with the Americans and the Europeans, he contends, it could at least come to an understanding with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Babak Negahdari, head of the Majles Research Center and an ally of Speaker Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf, considers it an “unforgivable” stain on Iran’s national honor to be excluded from the international arena. But like the leopard that cannot change its spots, Negahdari reverts to “enemy conspiracies”—in addition to domestic incompetence—to explain why Iran is not currently occupying its rightful place among the nations. With Iran’s neighbors like Turkey and the UAE making geopolitical moves in the region to seize economic opportunities, Negahdari worries Iran is falling behind, even in attracting investment from China. If any confirmation of the harmful effects of sanctions was needed from Iran’s business community, it came from Farahnaz Rafe’, the head of the National Center for Iranian Rugs. Prior to the sanctions, she said, the U.S. imported two-thirds of its rugs from Iran, but the country has now been supplanted by India. Hosein Ala’i, a former IRGC man who at one time served as commander of the Iranian Navy and has since become a voice for moderation, acknowledged to the centrist Khabar Online how powerless Iran is in the face of U.S. sanctions.
If anyone in the higher echelons of power was paying attention to such arguments, President Ra’isi would almost certainly not be among them. Parroting a tired line from his presidential campaign in 2021, he proclaimed once again that his administration would not tie Iran’s economic problems to the issue of sanctions. Referring to the recent meeting he had with senior Shiite clerics in Qom (see above), he announced he had made a promise to them—a hopelessly vague one, as it turns out—that his administration would “advance its affairs.” As for what Iran’s friends think about how Iran can do that, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was quite clear in a phone call with his Iranian counterpart: “Revive the JCPoA.”
