Iranian hard-liners use reporter as a pawn: Our view

The most potent argument against the Obama administration's nuclear weapons negotiations with Iran has little to do with the details that have been so hotly contested since a framework agreement was reached three weeks ago. It is much simpler: Iran cannot be trusted.

Even if President Hassan Rouhani and his negotiators are sincere, the skeptics note, they represent just the most moderate faction of a complex, radical regime. Unless Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gets firmly behind them — suppressing clerics and Revolutionary Guards who oppose any accommodation with the West — there will be no credible agreement.

Whether Khamenei will take such steps remains mostly guesswork, but anyone trying to read the tea leaves would do well to scrutinize Iran's treatment of Jason Rezaian, an Iranian-American reporter for TheWashington Post. For the past nine months, Rezaian has been unjustly imprisoned, initially without charges and reliable legal representation, then last week on trumped-up accusations of espionage, "propaganda against the establishment" and related absurdities.

There isn't the slightest shred of evidence that the 39-year-old journalist is a spy. Instead, he appears to have become a pawn of hard-liners trying to scuttle the nuclear talks. That makes his case a window on the fissures in the Iranian regime, and on how Khamenei will handle them.

Just as Rouhani's government lacks unilateral authority over Iran's nuclear program, it also lacks jurisdiction over the Revolutionary Court that is handling Rezaian's case. The court is controlled by Iran's clergy and ultimately by Khamenei, as is the Intelligence Ministry that brought the charges.

The motive behind the charges doesn't seem mysterious.

Hard-liners have alleged that Rezaian's supposed spying was aided by Rouhani's nephew, a transparent attempt to embarrass the president, and news of the charges came from the Fars News Agency, which has ties to the Republican Guard Corps.

Absent Khamenei's intervention, the hard-liners appear likely to get their way. The case was assigned to a notoriously harsh judge, Abolghassem Salavati, who was sanctioned by the European Union in 2011 for "gross human rights violations." In 2009, he sentenced two hapless American hikers caught near Iran's border to eight years in prison.

Predictably, pleas for justice from Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, the key figure in the nuclear negotiations, have been ignored, and U.S. options, other than the quiet diplomacy the Obama administration is already conducting, are scarce. An attempt by Sens. Marco Rubio and Mark Kirk to link Rezaian's case to any nuclear deal only plays into the hard-liners' hands.

But the longer that Khamenei continues to cater to his extremists, the less reason there is to believe he will ever sign off on a credible nuclear arms agreement — much less that the administration's hopes for drawing Iran into the community of civilized nations will ever be realized.

All because the supreme leader can't bring himself to let an innocent man go free.

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