Iran’s embattled President Hassan Rouhani is facing growing fire from both ends of the country’s political spectrum. Two days after biting criticism of his administration’s economic performance by Aftab Yazd, a newspaper close to reformist clerics, the right-leaning website Raja News, close to the ultraconservative Paydari Front (‘Steadfast Front’) lashed out at Rouhani’s political and security policies.

Raja News wrote on Saturday, September 26 that while Rouhani had promised peace and stability, his failures in the area of security had been shown by the killing of Revolutionary Guards Qods Force Commander Qassem Soleimani in January and the bombing of Iran’s Natanz nuclear site in July.

Attacks on Rouhani’s performance are coming not only from political rivals or former allies. Within his own administration, Health Minister Saeed Namaki has criticized the government for withholding most of a billion euros ($1.16 billion) allocation from the country’s reserve fund to the coronavirus task force.

It is not clear where the administration has spent the rest of the money. Media reports have charged that some of the fund has been spent in Gilan Province, where vice-president Mohammad Baqer Nobakht comes from.

Raja News was scathing about Rouhani’s argument, made this week to the cabinet, that his economic plans had failed due to an “economic war” with the United States. The website argued that US pressures on Iran’s economy began in 2018, five years after Rouhani had promised during his first presidential campaign in 2013 to sort out Iran’s economic problems.

Raja News accused the Rouhani administration of removing elements of deterrence in Iran’s nuclear program and tying the fate of the economy to negotiations with the US.

What the paper did not mention, is the fact that Iran was under heavy international sanctions in 2013 when the government began negotiations with the United States to reach an agreement on its nuclear program. Moreover, many have said since then that without the approval of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Rouhani would not have been able to negotiate over nuclear issues. 

The website charged that Rouhani’s economic team were too old and incompetent, suggesting they had realized that understandings reached with the Europeans, including the Instex mechanism to circumvent US sanctions, would not help Iran: “Instead of trying to solve the country’s economic problems, they focused on the European financial mechanism Instex and tried to have the colonial FATF bills [accepting rules drawn up by the inter-governmental Financial Action Task Force against money laundering] ratified.”

The reformist Aftab Yazd lashed out at Rouhani for failing to pay the salaries of the medical staff who it said were working harder than ever to control the coronavirus pandemic. The paper demanded that Rouhani should explain “what has become of the one billion dollars the Supreme Leader’s office put at the disposal of the administration. Where is it going to be spent while Iran has entered the third wave of the pandemic?”

Aftab Yazd blamed the Rouhani administration for high prices for everything “from eggs to houses” and for suggesting the inflation rate was 26 percent while “the most optimistic estimates” put it at over 50 percent: “These days it is difficult to listen to Rouhani in cold blood…A large part of Iranian society is facing a tough challenge to make ends meet and the consumption of meat in the country has dropped by 40 percent…In 2017 Rouhani warned the people if they do not vote for him the rate of exchange for every US dollar would reach 50,000 rials, but the exchange rate is currently more than 280,000 rials.”

Apparently stung by such criticisms, Rouhani said on Saturday September 26 that some of his opponents were misleading the public. The president advised the nation to direct their ire at the US.

“For all problems and shortcomings in the country, the people should direct their swearing and cursing at the United States,” he said during a meeting of the coronavirus taskforce. “The address is the White House in Washington D.C…Some individuals mislead the people because they have a political interest in misleading them.”