Rafsanjani: Announce the Achievements of the JCPOA, Critics Will Be Ashamed

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council, said on Thursday in Qazvin: "The achievements of the JCPOA have solved all the problems of the country." According to ISNA news agency, the Chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council, speaking among students at the Islamic Azad University in Qazvin, emphasized: "If the government announces a list of problems solved due to the JCPOA, those who say the JCPOA has had no achievements will certainly be ashamed before the people." According to Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, "Some have closed their eyes and keep saying the JCPOA has had no achievements, while they think that stopping the JCPOA is an art, whereas every clause of its provisions has been worked on, but they do not realize that the JCPOA is in the interest of the country." The Chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council further enumerated some of the achievements of the JCPOA: "With the situation created by the JCPOA, the closed paths have opened, and today all universities in the world are open to young people, and students can continue their studies in specific fields abroad." In another part of his speech, he criticized the performance of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government, stating: "In the previous government, most of the country's production industries were closed or semi-closed; the achievements of the JCPOA have now caused the wheels of the country's economy to start moving." According to Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, "In the previous government, oil was sold by intermediaries like Babak Zanjani to other countries, but now we have returned to the pre-sanction era." Hashemi Rafsanjani added: "Before the JCPOA, Iranian ships were not easily accepted by other countries, but today they are welcomed." Criticism of the JCPOA or insistence on its ineffectiveness by conservatives, and in contrast, the defense of government officials and supporters of the government regarding the post-JCPOA period and its achievements in recent months has become a site of conflict, confrontation, and challenge among political groups. One day after the publication of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's remarks in Qazvin, Fars News Agency published multiple interviews with conservative political figures and analysts in response to these remarks. Mehdi Hashemi, a conservative member of parliament who served as the head of the Ministry of Interior during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidency, stated in an interview with Fars News Agency: "The general feeling in the country is that we have been wronged in the JCPOA, but if the government denies that we have been wronged in the JCPOA, it should announce what its achievements have been." This parliament member also emphasized that "to say that the JCPOA has had no achievements or to claim that we have achieved all our demands in the JCPOA, both may not be fair." Lotfollah Forouzandeh, spokesman for the Islamic Revolution Martyrs Society and deputy of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was another conservative figure that Fars News Agency approached for a response to Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's remarks in Qazvin. The deputy of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad posed the question: "If the achievements of the JCPOA are not limited to production and livelihood, then what has it affected?" He said: "The criterion is the people's pockets, not on paper." According to this political activist critical of the government, "the publication of the achievements of the JCPOA will face welcome from factions." Foad Izadi, an international relations expert who has been a constant presence in Iranian state television programs criticizing the JCPOA in recent months, emphasized in an interview with Fars News Agency: "The Americans themselves say they gave nothing to Iran in the JCPOA." According to this political analyst, in the discussion of the nuclear agreement and the signing of the JCPOA, "the other side took extensive commitments, and we received limited concessions on paper, and in fact, we received constraints on paper that we did not even get in practice." The publication of these remarks comes as Hassan Rouhani, the President of Iran, defended his foreign policy less than two weeks ago during his provincial visit to Semnan, stating: "To those who say what has the JCPOA done for us? It should be said that the JCPOA has registered a political and legal honor in the history of Iran and has simultaneously annulled six Security Council resolutions and twelve Board of Governors resolutions against Iran." He emphasized that "reconstruction and renovation after destruction takes time," adding: "Only three months have passed since the implementation of the JCPOA, but some think thirty years have passed."