Iran's acting president Mohammad Mokhber claimed on Monday that Iran is now much stronger than a few years ago, asserting it could 'hit' neighboring countries and Israel with little to no repercussions.
Mokhber was referring to missile attacks by Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) against targets in Pakistan, Iraqi Kurdistan, and Israel, all of which have taken place in the context of an ongoing conflict after 7 October.
"There was a time when [the IRGC] would test a missile, and all [Iran’s] markets would be unsettled. Government officials would scream, saying, ‘what will happen to our country after what you did’. [But] today, three countries have been hit. We hit Israel. [Yet] people wake up in the morning… and the currency rate is the same. Inflation is the same," Mokhber said.
The interim president was speaking at the opening ceremony of Iran’s new parliament, defending the government of former president Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash in northwestern Iran last week. Mokhber seemed to be undisturbed by the presence of foreign dignitaries, including those whose countries were targeted by the IRGC missiles.
His remarks raised a few eyebrows, not least because Pakistan and Iraq whose targeting Mokhber seemed to be celebrating, declared national mourning following the death of Ebrahim Raisi and sent high-ranking delegations to his funeral.
As undiplomatic as Mokhber’s words may be, it betrays an element of truth that has been brought up by many politicians in the US and elsewhere: that the Islamic Republic of Iran has gained in confidence and aggression in the past few years, especially since Joe Biden entered the White House.
Biden critics say his ‘leniency’ has emboldened Iran and the IRGC. On Monday, Wall Street Journal reported that the Biden administration is advising European countries to "back off plans to rebuke Iran" for advances in its nuclear program, hoping to prevent escalation ahead of the 2024 US elections in November.
Even more controversial than his assertion about Iran becoming immune to repercussions, was Mokhlber’s claim that economy had come out unscathed from Tehran’s aggressive actions –on the day that brokers in two major stock exchanges in Iran halted trading to protest the downturn in Iran’s stock market.
Many users on social media were quick to point out that Iran’s currency hit an all-time low against the US dollar following the IRGC’s drone and missile attack on Israel on April 13. Others mocked Mokhber's words, stating that Iran’s economy was in ruins, and that millions of Iranians were struggling to make ends meet while the nation’s wealth was being spent on the regime’s costly adventures in the region and beyond.
It’s unclear if Mokhber will stand in the upcoming elections to replace Raisi. He is well positioned as vice-president and enjoys the trust of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. However, other hardline figures are also contenders, such as Saeed Jalili, a former nuclear negotiator known for his tough stance, and Parviz Fattah, a former IRGC member currently heading the influential parastatal foundation for the Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Orders, a key player in Iran’s economy.
“It's just a contest between different hardliners, and they're all devoted to [Supreme Leader Ali] Khamanei,” said Arash Azizi, Iran analyst and author of ‘What Iranians Want: Woman, Life, Freedom.
Azizi said an important question is which hardliners will run and which organizations will support it, and if centrists and so-called reformists are allowed to run, who will it be and how will everyday Iranians react given epic low voter turnouts in the last few years?
In March, less than 10% of Iranians voted in parliamentary by-elections. Many observers believe real turnout in the last two previous elections has been around 20-30 per cent.
As the registration for Iran’s presidential elections draws near on May 30 and closes on June 3, Azizi ’s list of potential candidates are as follows:
Saeed Jalili: He’s an ultra-hardliner who confirmed his candidacy this weekend. According to Azizi, he is unpopular and "very widely hated.” Azizi described his main path to be ordering the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to beat up women on the streets of Iran. Jalili was the secretary of the National Security Council between 2005 to 2013 and was the chief nuclear negotiator. Azizi said “he was an absolute disaster in that position.” With a PhD on diplomacy of the Prophet Mohammad, Azizi said Jalili was not the ‘career diplomat’ type to get the job done.
Parviz Fattah: Azizi said he was the head of the Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Orders Headquarters. “They're called parastatal foundations. It is an organization, whose head is appointed by Khamenei. And they were built by expropriating the wealth of, you know, Iranians before 1979. And they use that to do all sorts of things,” said Azizi. He said Fattah’s base is with the IRGC and military caste.
Saeed Mohammad: Azizi described him as being similar to Fattah and came from a background in the IRGC. He’s much younger than other potential candidates being in his 50s and he tried to run in 2021 but was barred from the Guardian Council.
Ali Larijani: Azizi calls him a “Centrist conservative” only because he supported so-called centrist former President Hassan Rouhani in the past election. He’s the former speaker of the parliament and hails from the religious center of Qom. “He is also currently from the foundation of the regime. His brother was the head of the Expediency Council. Sadeq Larijani, who was the former head of the judiciary, a potential kind of a Supreme Leader even at some point, one of his other brothers, was a key sort of people person in the Iranian Foreign ministry for many years, the key clerical family that had been sidelined by the regime in recent years,” added Azizi.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, is the current Parliament Speaker. Azizi said Ghalibaf is “also a conservative hardliner in some way, but known to be much more technocratic than ideological.” According to Azizi’s sources there was a meeting between Iran’s Supreme Leader and Ghalibaf that did not go well. He said he has a lot of political ambition with a deep IRGC past.
Freelance journalist and former senior analyst with the US government Behrouz Turani believes the conservative camp is going to win the election with the full support of the Interior Ministry, the Guardian Council and the Supreme leader.
“Iranians have not been going to the polls to vote, at least since 2021, because they don't have anyone to vote for. That is, the main problem about the Iranian election. It's not representative. It's not fair. It's not free. It generally depends on what the political system and what the Supreme Leader want from the election,” said Turani.
He said that no one in Iran can directly elect their president, instead “the biases and preferences for the Guardian Council, which is, supervised by, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei,” decide how things will go.
The elections are happening during an economic crisis as Turani put it, “the biggest crisis in the lifetime of the Islamic Republic in the past 45 years.”
“This election is tremendously important for the government, but the nation has shown during the past maybe eight years even that they have no interest whatsoever in any kind of elections because they, are led by the government itself to believe that, no president, no parliament in Iran is going to serve their interest,” Turani told Iran International.
He said if Larijani is allowed to run for president there may be some sort of chance for the US and Iran to resume ties and that would help with what Turani described as a ‘catastrophic’ economic situation in the country.
Turani pointed out the timing of Iran’s elections are critical with the US elections only a few months away. Azizi said even political commentators in Iran have said whoever takes charge needs to be able to come up against Donald Trump if he is elected president.
"Tehran is definitely thinking about Trump," said Azizi.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that Iran's estimated stockpile of enriched uranium had reached more than 30 times the limit set out in the 2015 nuclear agreement between Tehran and world powers.
According to a confidential IAEA report, which Iran International has read and reviewed, as of May 11, Iran has 142.1 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 60 percent which is an increase of 20.6 kilograms since that last report by the UN watchdog in February.
“It's a pretty grim picture of Iran's advancing nuclear program,” said Andrea Stricker, the Deputy Director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD)’s Nonproliferation and Biodefense program.
Stricker told Iran International that Iran is getting dangerously close to gaining nuclear weapons and time is of the essence.
“Now they [Iran] have enough, at the 60% level, to make almost four nuclear weapons. And that material can be used directly in a nuclear device, if a country chose, and then there's enough for probably more than 13 weapons overall, and they can fabricate that into weapons grade uranium within around five months.”
“Then it would take additional time, at least six months for them to be able to fabricate that fuel into a crude nuclear device. And then even longer, perhaps more than a year, to be able to put it on a ballistic missile,” said Stricker.
“Basically, once you get to 20%, you have done most of the work on a technical level, and then it's only a matter of days, for example, to transfer 60% enriched uranium to weapons grade. And that's what we're looking at, a very short breakout time, perhaps less than seven days to make the weapons grade uranium for one bomb,” she added.
Could Iran acquire a bomb?
Patrick Clawson, a Research Counselor at The Washington Institute, said the latest developments are disturbing.
"It's very discouraging because, a year ago, the United States government thought that it had reached an informal agreement with Iran where Iran would essentially stop its production of 60% enriched uranium in return to the United States not making too much effort to stop Iranian sales of oil to China," said Clawson.
The nuclear watchdog's warning comes in the backdrop of escalating tensions in the region. Just last month Iran and Israel, for the first time, conducted direct strikes on each other's territories.
"The International Atomic Energy Agency's chief, Mr. Grossi, says that Iran could produce the fissile material for a bomb in about a week," said Clawson.
For a bomb delivered by a missile, however, Clawson said it could take up to a year.
"A year is not that long," he added.
Stricker believes Iran's advancements could empower the Islamic Republic by giving it a “nuclear deterrent," allowing it to “pursue arming its proxies to have them destabilize other governments and countries, and launch attacks.”
Shifting paradigms in the Middle East
According to a report released Monday by the Wall Street Journal, the Biden administration is pressing its European allies not to confront Iran on its nuclear program.
The report said the US was arguing against an effort by Britain and France to disapprove Iran at the IAEA's member state board.
Iran insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. Rafael Mariano Grossi, the IAEA chief, has previously warned the UN agency cannot guarantee that none of Iran’s centrifuges may have been used for clandestine enrichment.
Former President Donald Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018. Under the original deal, struck in 2015 by the Obama administration, Iran was allowed to enrich uranium only up to 3.67% purity, maintain a stockpile of about 300 kilograms and use only very basic IR-1 centrifuges.
In mid-May, Kamal Kharrazi, a senior advisor to Iran's ruler Ali Khamenei, said that Iran would be left with no option than to change its nuclear doctrine if Israel threatened its nuclear facilities amid heightened tensions.
The US State department deputy spokesperson said, in response, when asked about Kharrazi's comments during a press briefing, that the US would not allow Iran to build a nuclear bomb.
Iran's foreign ministry spokesperson later said in Tehran that Kharrazi's remarks were not the official position of the Islamic Republic.
There is great risk at one point, according to Clawson, that the Islamic Republic decides the time is right for Iran to move forward.
"If Iran were to explode a nuclear device, much less to test an actual bomb that would change the Middle East, and in particular, it would put a lot of pressure on a place like Saudi Arabia, whose leaders have for years, said to the United States, If Iran gets a bomb, we'll get a bomb," he said.