The opponents of President Hassan Rouhani and his Foreign Minister Mohamamd Javad Zarif have not clearly stated what is their alternative for the Iranian nuclear case. This is a big barrier on the way of a president, who in 2013 promised a full resolution of the nuclear standoff with the West in favor of Iran as well as providing a new and different life for Iranians.

Hassan Rouhani, however, is not alone under this acid rain. As observed, the U.S. President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry are also on the same boat.

Local and foreign opponents of the peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear case might be looking at the issues from a different prospective and might even have their own ideological reasoning for opposing it. Nonetheless, they all share the same political idea: “There should not be a nuclear pact at any cost.”

Although judging the opponents of the resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue and their motifs rest with the Iranian nation itself, the severity of the systematic objections has not been able to force the realistic and open-minded president and foreign minister to make any changes in their diplomatic strive to “negotiate for peace, and not negotiate for war.”

This resistance can be promising. However, it has put Rouhani and Zarif against such an unprecedented wave of opposition that no Iranian politician has ever experienced during the past thirty-six years. None of the opponents’ political, social, religious, or media bodies has refrained from leveling criticism against the president and his foreign policy team.

As evident, many European political observers and diplomats believe the wave of such oppositions will increase as we approach the potential resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue, but not merely due to the nuclear case, rather for the fact that the Rouhani administration would be given an upper hand when dealing with the international community and when dealing with Iran’s foreign policy challenges right from the next day a nuclear deal is sealed.

This, many hold, is a quite unfavorable situation for Rouhani’s opponents. The triumph of Rouhani might not be synonymous with an immediate or staged removal of anti-Iran sanctions nor with a significant economic recovery. However, in the current situation, they do not matter much. Rouhani’s opponents, I believe, are more aware of this point.

Indeed, the main issue is that the Iranian economic policies suffer less from a shortage of financial resources and international credit and more of the absence of a balanced and trust-making international foreign policy, something Rouhani has committed himself to fix. That is why oppositions against Rouhani and Zarif have been increasingly in direct relationship with their victories in nuclear negotiations and in international scenes.

Nevertheless, one, in an anxious pessimism or in a cautious optimism, should ask which would ultimately determine the future of the talks and the final political orientation of Iran’s foreign policy: the severity of oppositions to Rouhani or his higher status among Iranians and the international community. To answer this, one needs to wait for 10 to 12 days.

MD/P