Iran appears to be trying to reassure critics that the deal is right for it, according to Arash Karami at AL Monitor:
On Iran’s foreign policy after the deal, [foreign policy advisor to Khamenei, Ali Akbar] Velayati said, “Iran’s policies will not change under any conditions. The Islamic Republic of Iran’s support of regional fighters in the path of resistance will be the same as it was — rather, it will be strengthened. The Islamic Republic of Iran is determined to help the government and people of Iraq in the fight against terrorism, whether they be extremist terrorists or moderate — to use an American phrase — terrorists.” He added, “Iran will not hesitate to help the people of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.”
Velayati said that Iran would have never signed a “bad deal,” which according to him would take away its nuclear program, limit its research and development, impact Iran’s defensive capabilities, prevent Iran’s free exchange with world economies and deprive the country of scientific and technological relationships.
The interview, which was the top story on Khamenei’s personal website, appeared to be aimed at reassuring critics of the nuclear deal who say that it will limit Iran’s missile program or change Iran’s regional policy.
AL Monitor‘s Mazal Mualem is outraged at the behavior of the Israeli media, not to mention the Knesset:
From the moment the agreement was signed July 14, the Israeli public only heard one-sided commentary on the deal’s implications. The key personage who set the tone was, of course, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who declared that the agreement paves Iran’s way to the atom bomb. But even the heads of the opposition parties, Zionist Camp leader Isaac Herzog and Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, also took part in the effort. They lambasted the agreement as threatening to Israel, and targeted Netanyahu as being responsible for the debacle. Lapid even demanded a national commission of inquiry to investigate the failures in foreign policy that led to the bad agreement (in his words). “We thought it would be a bad agreement, but it is even worse than we expected,” Lapid said. …
Even former Mossad head Efraim Halevy, who has long maintained that Iran does not constitute an existential threat to the State of Israel, presented on Israeli state radio a more balanced view regarding the deal. At the margins of the public discourse can also be heard the statements of Amos Yadlin, the former chief of defense intelligence, and former Prime Minister Ehud Barak. All of these voices seemed to try to dampen the national panic.
Both Israel’s Netanyahu and the United States’ GOP have hinted, or even outright called for, attacks on Iran in order to destroy the nuclear facilities. Israel’s Shai Feldman, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and Ariel Levite suggest the ongoing failure of the use of force make the deal inevitable in “Seven Realities That Made an Iran Deal Almost Inevitable”:
The third reality comprised the broader context of the second: a growing skepticism about the utility of force in the twenty-first century. This skepticism was bred not only by a stream of U.S. failures to achieve political goals through military means in Iraq and Afghanistan (and by Israel in both Lebanon and Gaza) but also by a growing appreciation that such use of force often results in unintended consequences. Indeed, as in the case of Iraq, such consequences could prove even more ominous than the challenges that led to the use of force in the first place. Interestingly, President Obama is not the only relevant leader who shares such skepticism. Measured not by his rhetoric but by his behavior in all military confrontations during his terms as prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu has apparently grown no less skeptical about the use of force and sensitive to its potential downsides, causing him to be historically among the most cautious of Israeli leaders. The result is that both Obama and Netanyahu found it very difficult to project a credible military threat that could have produced effective leverage in the negotiations with Iran.
And Iran is bringing other weapons to bear in this fight, although the precise target of this one is somewhat unclear. AL Monitor has the report:
Vocativ, an online media company that uses data-mining technology to report stories trending in social media, reported that as the Iran nuclear talks in Vienna headed into the 11th hour, former underground rapper Amir Tataloo and his new song, “Energy Hastei,” which means “Nuclear Energy” in Persian, was the top Google search in Tehran. …
Tataloo’s new video is prefaced with a brief message that reads, “No power can prevent the Iranian nation from having peaceful nuclear energy.” Dressed in light camouflage with an “Allah” necklace around his neck, the rapper’s initial verse is laced with passive-aggressive lyrics that he indirectly links to themes throughout the video: nationalism, defending Iranian sovereignty and Iran’s nuclear energy program. As he sings the chorus, “Having an armed Persian Gulf is our absolute right,” the rapper stands provocatively atop the Iranian Navy warship, Damavand, joined by a stone-faced unit of Iranian soldiers on the ship’s deck. …
Despite the buzz on social media and a handful of mostly hard-line Iranian news sites, there was a distinctive silence about the video in the Iranian press. The Twitter account of the ultra-conservative website Mashregh News fired off a number of promotional tweets about the video, including a link where fans can download the audio file for free.
