Backlash Against U.S. in Iran Seems to Gather Force After Nuclear Deal

[DaNGeROuS KiLLeR]

A K.F.C. knockoff in Tehran on Tuesday after it was closed by the police.

 

Anyone who hoped that Iran’s nuclear agreement with the United States and other powers portended a new era of openness with the West has been jolted with a series of increasingly rude awakenings over the past few weeks.

 

On Tuesday, the eve of the 36th anniversary of the student takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran, state television announced the arrest of a Lebanese-American missing for weeks — after he had been invited here by the government. He has been accused of spying.

 

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, said the “Death to America” slogan is eternal. New anti-American billboards in Tehran include a mockery of the Iwo Jima flag-raising photograph that symbolized Marine sacrifice in World War II. And an Iranian knockoff version of K.F.C., the chicken chain widely associated with the United States, was summarily closed after two days.

 

“It feels like a witch hunt,” said one Iranian-American businessman in Tehran, who dared not speak for attribution over fear for his safety. “It’s pretty scary.”

 

Ever since the nuclear accord was reached in mid-July and endorsed by Ayatollah Khamenei, he has been insisting it did not signal rapprochement with the United States — although some tacit improvements have emerged.

 

Military forces of Iran and the United States have avoided each other in fighting Islamic State militants in Iraq. Last week, Iran participated for the first time in international talks aimed at resolving the Syria conflict.

 

Many proponents of the nuclear accord, in both countries, have suggested that a gradual improvement in relations was inevitable. Some even foresaw a shift in the region, shaped by collaboration between the United States and Iran to bring peace, coupled with an eased enmity that could embolden President Hassan Rouhani to open up the country.

 

While Mr. Rouhani promised more freedoms when he was elected two years ago, he has taken only a few cosmetic steps.

 

Now, as the autumn leaves are falling in Tehran, there are no signs that bolder changes are coming. On the contrary, a backlash appears to be underway, promoted by Mr. Rouhani’s hard-line adversaries in the government who are deeply skeptical of the United States and its allies.

 

The backlash comes as Iran is preparing for parliamentary elections in February that constitute a litmus test of Mr. Rouhani’s policies. It seems that hard-liners, using the intelligence unit of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, have started rounding up journalists, activists and cultural figures, as a warning that the post nuclear-deal period cannot lead to further relaxation or political demands.

 

In recent days at least five prominent figures were arrested by the intelligence unit, among them Isa Saharkhiz, a well-known journalist and reformist, who was released from jail in 2013 following a conviction for his alleged involvement in the 2009 anti-government protests. On Sunday, Ehsan Mazandarani, the top editor of a reformist newspaper, Farhikhtegan, was arrested by the same unit, the semiofficial Tasnim news agency reported. On Tuesday, they arrested the well-known actress and newspaper columnist, Afarin Chitsaz, the Amadnews website reported.

 

Proponents of the nuclear deal had expected some backlash in Iran. But even they appear to have been blindsided by its intensity.

 

“All these arrests baffle me,” said Farshad Ghorbanpour, a political analyst who has long said the nuclear deal would lead to positive changes and more freedoms. “I cannot say more.”

 

State-sanctioned media have been busy producing a litany of American conspiracy theories — Iran’s Press TV website even published an article on Tuesday raising the possibility that the C.I.A. was responsible for downing a Russian jetliner in Egypt over the weekend. Iranian news has also given prominent mention to the “network of American and British spies” rounded up by the Guards’s agents.

 

Their most prominent targets are dual Iranian and American citizens, but on Tuesday state television said Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese-American information technology expert who mysteriously disappeared here on Sept. 18, also had been seized.

 

Heralding the arrest as yet another capture of an “American spy,” state television said Mr. Zakka, the secretary general of the Arab Information and Communications Technology Organization, was a “treasure trove” because of “connections with intelligence and military bodies in the United States.”

 

Mr. Zakka had been invited to Iran with his family by the vice president for Women and Family Affairs, Shahindokht Molaverdi, to speak at a conference. Leaving his hotel in Tehran on Sept. 18, Mr. Zakka never arrived at the airport, his organization has said.

 

There was no immediate reaction from the organization to news of Mr. Zakka’s arrest. And it unclear whether Vice President Molaverdi had known about the reason behind his disappearance.

 

The confirmation of Mr. Zakka’s arrest followed the incarceration of an Iranian-American consultant, Siamak Namazi, known for his advocacy of improved ties with the United States. His arrest has not yet been officially confirmed, but his friends said that his passport was taken upon arrival in Iran mid-September, and security officials took him from his mother’s home in mid October.

 

Jason Rezaian, The Washington Post’s Tehran correspondent, an Iranian-American held on charges of espionage since July 2014, was convicted recently, state media have said. But his lawyer, Leila Ahsan, says she has not yet received a verdict.

 

At least two other Americans of Iranian descent, Amir Hekmati and Saeed Abedini, are languishing in prison here as well.

 

In a sign that the crackdown may just be starting, the head of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, warned on Sunday that a new sedition was underway in which the United States and its “domestic allies” are trying to influence the Islamic Republic. “This sedition will be longer and more complicated than all other seditions,” he said.

 

Symbols of the United States, a rarity in the Iranian capital, are under even greater scrutiny after Ayatollah Khamenei warned that the United States was attempting to subvert the country through “cultural penetration.”

 

On Tuesday a newly opened Tehran restaurant that had advertised itself as a K.F.C. outlet was closed by the municipality. Abbas Pazuki, the restaurant’s manager, told the Tasnim news agency that the closure had been a mistake. “We have no connection with the American K.F.C.,” he said.

 

Officials at the parent company of K.F.C., Yum Brands of Louisville, Ky., did not immediately return telephone messages. American fast-food chains have been saying, however, that they have no definitive plans to enter the Iranian market, even after the lifting of sanctions.

 

Other hints of an anti-American backlash have been accruing here. In September, for example, shops and textile producers were told they can no longer sell clothes with labels of the American or British flag.

 

On Wednesday, Iran will loudly celebrate the Nov. 4, 1979, takeover of the United States Embassy, with a state-sponsored rally in front of the building, commonly known as the den of spies.

 

To help promote the proper mood, the municipality has erected billboards showing a young man wearing a baseball cap spray-painting the words “down with America.”

Another billboard on Tehran’s central Vali-e Asr Square satirizes the flag-raising at Iwo Jima, where many Marines died, showing it planted atop a pile of bodies symbolizing historic “wrongdoings by the Americans.”

 

In a speech on Tuesday, Ayatollah Khamenei sought to emphasize why shouting “Death to America,” words that proponents of improved relations call unhelpful at best, will be forever justified. He also suggested they should not be taken literally.

 

“The slogan ‘Death to America’ is backed by reason and wisdom,” he said in a speech. “It goes without saying that the slogan does not mean death to the American nation; this slogan means death to the United States policies, death to arrogance.”

 

He also warned against domestic enemies who may have been encouraged by the nuclear accord.

 

“One of the measures America has taken in the course of the recent years was to make some people cover up Americans’ face with makeup,” he said, “pretending that even if Americans were once our enemy, they are not anymore.”