The leader of Iran’s largest exile opposition group said Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s acquiescence on several key points in the new nuclear agreement could lead to a weakening of his power and undermine what she called "the ruling religious fascism."
Maryam Rajavi, president of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), told reporters Tuesday that although the Ayatollah gave his approval to the final document completed by U.S. and Iranian negotiators in Vienna, others in the Iranian leadership, including several members of the Iranian parliament, were denouncing the nuclear agreement as "a chalice of nuclear poison."
The lawmakers were referring to the part of the agreement under which Iran agreed to reduce its stockpile of low-enriched nuclear weapons by 98 percent and significantly scale back its number of centrifuges.
The Tehran government’s acquiescence on this point "represents a reluctant retreat by Khamenei and a violation of red lines upon which he had repeatedly insisted over the past 12 years," said Rajavi.
Under Article 110 of the Iranian constitution, the supreme leader is the final authority and spiritual leader, or grand ayatollah, of Iran. He has full control over foreign policy, the armed forces, and nuclear policy.
But Rajavi predicted that the denunciation of the agreement by some officials will "aggravate the power struggle at the top, upset the internal balance of power to the detriment of Khamenei, and permeate the entire regime hierarchy."
As to why the 74-year-old Khamenei, who has held his all-powerful post since he succeeded the first Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, in 1989, would take such a step backward, Rajavi believes it was "out of concern over Iranian society’s explosive state, the debilitating impact of the sanctions, their impasse in the region, and the prospects for a toughening in the terms of the agreement by the U.S. Congress."
She also said she believes that had the P5+1 — the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany — taken a harder line in the talks with Tehran, the regime "would have had no choice but to fully retreat and permanently abandon its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Specifically, Iran would have been compelled to halt all uranium enrichment and completely shut down its bomb-making projects."
Founded in 1981, NCRI represents political figures, academicians, and other Iranians who have fled their homeland and are dedicated to the overthrow of the Islamic Republic and its replacement with a secular and non-nuclear democracy.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax.
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