During their years in office, particularly in the eleventh and twelfth governments, Hassan Rouhani and Mohammad Javad Zarif made decisions whose effects and consequences are still among the main subjects of political controversy in the country. The JCPOA is considered the most important symbol of this record; an agreement that was introduced to the public with promises of economic opening, lifting sanctions, and normalizing foreign relations, but the U.S. withdrawal from it and the return of sanctions raised serious questions about the level of guarantees, how to trust the other party, and the evaluation of the negotiating team.
Lack of Transparent Accountability
The issue is not just that the JCPOA did not yield the promised results; rather, despite the economic and political damages, the responsibility for the decisions and the extent of potential shortcomings of the decision-makers did not become a clear, comprehensive, and convincing process for public opinion. The report of the Special Commission on the JCPOA in the year 1394 also raised a series of criticisms and concerns regarding the text of the agreement and its mechanisms. However, there is a difference between political criticism, expert reports, and proving the legal responsibility of individuals; what remains a question is the reason for the lack of appropriate and transparent accountability regarding major decisions and their consequences.
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Rouhani's Role in Public Disillusionment
When society feels that officials are making costly decisions, but after their term ends, they neither provide clear answers nor face a credible mechanism for accountability, the consequence is not just dissatisfaction with one government. Such a situation can reinforce the perception that the costs of wrong decisions remain on the shoulders of the people, while former officials can return to the scene after a while and question the performance of others from a critical standpoint.
Recent movements by Rouhani should be viewed in this context. In his remarks regarding the war and the country's ongoing path, he has emphasized the necessity of national goals having public support and raised questions about the prolongation of the war and public opinion. These statements, regardless of the possibility of discussing the principle of public participation, also bring up a preliminary question: Is someone who has held the highest executive responsibility in the country for eight years willing to subject his own record of decisions to scrutiny with the same clarity before questioning the decisions of others today?
Zarif's Accountability and Diplomatic Challenges
The issue is similar in the case of Zarif. The re-publication of a video of his remarks about Iran's security perspective towards neighboring countries and the role of the Quds Force in regional policy has once again brought the long-standing dispute over the relationship between diplomacy and the field to the forefront. In these remarks, Zarif criticizes the interpretation that if neighbors are perceived as threats, Iran's representatives in those countries will be military representatives rather than diplomats and economic activists.
This discussion can be examined from the perspective of foreign policy; however, the fundamental question is why such positions are raised by someone who has been responsible for the diplomatic apparatus for years and has played a role in shaping the country's foreign policy approaches? If regional policy needed re-evaluation, what was the share of decisions made during his tenure in shaping the criticized situation? Is the critique of past policies only directed at others, while his own record remains outside the scope of examination?
Criticism of Zarif or any other negotiator should not be based on ambiguous quotes or attributing others' words to him; however, this precision should not become a means to evade the examination of the core record. If the logic of negotiation and agreement is still a topic of discussion, the experience of the JCPOA should also be thoroughly examined; not only from the angle of what others are doing today, but from the perspective of what yesterday's decision-makers did, what guarantees they received, and why the final result diverged from the announced expectations.
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