After Nuclear Deal, Iran’s Hard-liners Assert Power

DUBAI—President Hassan Rouhani and other relative reformers in the Iranian government have invested much of their political capital in negotiating the nuclear deal with the U.S. and other world powers.

But now the agreement has been reached, they are increasingly losing another battle that perhaps is even more important: opening the Islamic Republic more widely to the outside world. Iranian conservatives opposed to any relaxation in the regime’s traditional hostility to the U.S. are pushing back strongly, both at home and abroad.

“This is the beginning of Rouhani’s end. What we’ll now see, inside and outside the country, is an Iran that will pursue a more adversarial policy while the nice, smiling face of Iran is going to fade,” said Mehdi Khalaji, an Iran expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Already, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps has dramatically stepped up its direct involvement in the Syrian war, a deepening commitment highlighted by the rising number of Iranian military casualties, including senior IRGC officers, in recent weeks. Iran also tested a new, long-range precision-guided ballistic missile last month—a move that, according to Washington,

http://www.wsj.com/articles/after-nuclear-deal-irans-hard-liners-assert-power-1446732775