The situation in Iran after the announcement of the agreement is extremely tense and marked by deep internal division, political clashes and nighttime street protests, news.bg reported.
While the state apparatus is trying to present the deal as a diplomatic victory, radical circles in the country define it as national betrayal.
Immediately after the news of the finalization of the memorandum leaked, mass protests swept the capital Tehran and other major cities.
The demonstrators took to the streets, raising sharp slogans against the main architects of the deal on the Iranian side. The chants “Ghalibaf, Araghchi, resign, resign!“ were aimed directly at the speaker of parliament and chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, as well as at Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
The protesters are mainly from hardline and radical religious factions. They accuse the government of making “excessive concessions“ to Donald Trump. The biggest outrage is caused by the clause that Iran agrees to hand over control of its enriched uranium stockpile to the US and that “the management of the Strait of Hormuz will never be the same“. According to them, this deprives Tehran of its main weapon of deterrence.
The political elite in Iran is divided, which forced the top leadership to intervene publicly. Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian issued an official statement in which he publicly defended the negotiating team from the attacks of the hardliners. He admitted that the criticism was legitimate, but condemned the slander, warning that such behavior divides society at a time when “Iran's enemies are waiting for exactly this“.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was forced to give an extraordinary television interview to calm spirits. He focused entirely on the economic benefits – stressed that the agreement would completely lift the US naval blockade of Iranian ports and release billions of dollars in frozen assets, which would urgently save the country's economy.
To contain public discontent, the Iranian state machine and the media it controls imposed a specific reading of the events.
On state television , the agreement is presented as “Washington's capitulation“. The official banners on the channels read that “The US was forced to sign a ceasefire“ in order to save world markets and open the Strait of Hormuz.
IRNA News Agency deliberately downplayed the speed of the process, claiming until recently that Tehran was “remaining cautious about the deadlines“ and would not rush to physically sign, trying to show that Iran, not Trump, was dictating the terms.
In practice, what is happening in Iran right now is a fight for political survival of the moderate wing of the government, which is betting on the country's economic salvation by lifting sanctions, against the religious radicals, who see the agreement as a betrayal of the country's sovereignty and nuclear ambitions.