I have repeatedly said that I do not see any validity regarding the conflict between those known as conservatives and reformists in the Iranian mullahs’ regime. To me, this is nothing but a deliberate division of roles within the framework of a harmonious team that holds power and maintains it in various ways, and where the head of the regime (the Supreme Guide) works on the mapping and the distribution of roles according to the capabilities of the players and their political and propaganda skills.
In this context, it is possible to understand what is reported in media reports about “deep differences” between the two wings of the mullahs’ regime about ways to deal with the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, and how to respond to this operation, which represents a humiliating blow to the regime and undermines all its rumors about its operational and intelligence capabilities. Perhaps the fact that news of this disagreement is out into the open and circulated in the media by Iranian newspapers and websites is in itself the greatest evidence that it is a contrived dispute for the simple reason that no system facing this deep crisis can allow such news to come out unless there is a deliberate intention to let such leaks happen with care and accuracy in order to achieve certain strategic goals, in other words, the issue of thinking about responding to an assassination of this size cannot be disputed in this naive way, as the matter – regardless of our position and our opinion on the practices of this miserable regime – is related to the prestige of the Iranian State and a direct affront to its regional and international standing Therefore, it seems strange that such leaks come out unless it is intentional, and that there is an intention to politically exploit the event by sending a message to the next American administration, and pushing it to think about how to exploit the important maneuver margin that this alleged “dispute” between the two wings of the regime allows, by hastening to present a move that strengthens the position of the wing that is calling for calm and rationality at the expense of the wing calling for a strong response to this operation.
There is another proof – in my opinion – that the scenario of the dispute is an alleged one par excellence, and that proof is that the Iranian Shura Council has taken the initiative to adopt a law requiring the Iranian government not to abide by the provisions of the nuclear agreement and not to allow the inspection teams of the International Atomic Energy Agency to perform their routine tasks in inspecting nuclear facilities in Iran, as well as raising enrichment rates to the level of 20% unless economic sanctions are lifted, and the global banking sector and the global oil market are opened to Iranian exports within a month. This is a strange bill or decision because the Iranian Shura Council, like any parliament, has no power to adopt decisions or sovereign laws that are binding on the government in matters of national security. Rather, it has the powers of legislation and oversight, meaning that it can hold the government accountable and question it within the framework of the parliamentary oversight authority, meaning that it exercises a post facto authority over the regime’s decisions, and also approves the plans and policies of the government and has the right to reject any of these plans and policies if it wants to, but its decisions remain non-binding until they are approved by the Supreme Guide. Therefore the Council’s adoption of such decisions or laws aims only to suggest to the outside the existence of great pressure on President Rouhani and his government to adopt hard-line positions on the nuclear deal in response to Zadeh’s assassination.
Such scenarios also have a very important internal role for the mullahs’ regime, as they absorb the anger of the Iranian street and its rage against the regime, which claims to have a long external arm but fails to protect one of its most important scholars inside an Iranian city, as the assassination gave a strong and humiliating blow to all the mullahs ’claims and illusions of power they repeat, especially since it comes within less than a year of the assassination of the former Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander, Qassem Soleimani, in an American military operation that put the mullahs in a very critical dilemma, and they were forced to make a very “calculated” response despite the media hype that followed the operation about the Iranian retaliatory response scenarios!
The only certain truth in all that is being raised about the Iranian response scenarios to the killing of “the father of the Iranian nuclear program” is that the interest of the regime and its continuation is the keyword in any thinking related to responding to this operation, and the issue has nothing to do with a conflict of wings or anything else. The mullahs are accustomed to ‘drinking The Poison Cup” and to the practice of hiding their political intentions as long as their interest is achieved, and therefore all the media noise and propaganda about the Iranian response scenarios to the assassination of Zadeh and before him General Qassem Soleimani depends on its possible consequences and the extent of its impact on the fate of the mullahs’ regime.
