Shariatmadari the 'voice' of Iran’s hardliners: ‘A Nuclear Agreement Is Impossible’

Shariatmadari the 'voice' of Iran’s hardliners: ‘A Nuclear Agreement Is Impossible’. HT: UskowiOnIran.

Hossein Shariatmadari, the influential editor of Kayhan, arguably the voice of Iran’s hardliners, and himself an appointee of the country’s supreme leader, wrote an editorial in Saturday’s edition of the paper entitled, “A Nuclear Agreement Is Impossible.”

Shariatmadari argues that reaching a nuclear agreement with the West that would safeguard Iran’s legitimate interests is absolutely “impossible” and will not happen.

The editorial was published on the eve of a sensitive meeting in Lausanne between Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and Secretary of State John Kerry. They were to hammer out the details of an agreement before the 31 March deadline.

Shariatmadari has been regarded as an aide and confidant to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. His views and analyses during his long tenure at Kayhan have usually approximated those held by the country’s security establishment, especially the IRGC Intelligence. The bold tone in his prediction of the failure of the nuclear talks could mean one of the two things:

1. Shariatmadari is as always voicing the views of the supreme leader and the hard right establishment, in which case he apparently knows that the supreme leader has rejected the proposed agreement by the West, and the talks in Lausanne will fail.

2. In this particular issue, Shariatmadari’s views differ from those held by the supreme leader, but he would still make such a bold statement on the eve of Lausanne talks to rally the hard right establishment behind his views in a last-ditch attempt to stop a nuclear agreement with the West.

Not good in either case.

The first option would be the harbinger of growing and very dangerous tensions between Iran and the West, and internally between the hardliners and the moderate Rouhani administration.

The second option would signify the growing rift and rupture within the country’s political establishment, at the point of openly undermining Khamenei’s position, with all the uncertainties it would entail.