As the worshippers streamed into the vast Grand Mosalla mosque in central Tehran to hear a call to prayer, the mood was one of determination, and some trepidation, as they faced the real prospect of UN sanctions in 30 days and even a rerun of the 12-day war with Israel.
With guards watching, a worshipper giving his name simply as Mousavi said: “The reality is that many countries have nuclear power and are not subject to these rules but Iran is singled out for controls because we oppose Israel. We are dealt with in a different way because of our foreign policy.
“But an economic avalanche is looming with these UN sanctions – they are very different from what has happened before – and that means even more economic adversity will only impoverish us more. So I think we have to relent a little. We have to let the UN inspectors in. There is probably not much nuclear material for them to see.”
But that is far from the universal view, reflecting the politics of a mosque associated with hardliners and closely involved in the burial ceremonies of the previous president Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash that some Iranians still insist was not caused by bad weather but by sabotage by the Mossad.
Rajabi Seddequi, also fatalistic as he headed across the boiling and dusty car park towards the mosque, said: “For 40 years we have become familiar with sanctions. They did not break us. They made us more resilient. Life has gone on. It does not bother us whether they are UN or US sanctions. If we have to choose between war and the entry of the UN inspectors, we will choose war. We will protect Iran and Islam.”
A third worshipper, Ibrahim Heshmati, smiled as he insisted: “If there is a second war, this time it will be all the way to Israel. We stopped too early last time and we have the missiles to do this.
“How can we trust a country like the US since we were in the middle of negotiations when they allowed Israel to attack us? If they did not claim we were making nuclear weapons they would find another pretext,” he added. “If there is a war we have to face the consequences. This is both a war of religion and war between states. We have nothing to fear.”
Akbar Babaye, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, remembered: “Iran was alone before, facing US Awacs, French Mirage jets, T-72 tanks from Russia. We had 22 countries against us and alone we won.
“Every government has underestimated our resilience. We are not going to back down. Next time Israel is going to be completely destroyed. A third of the population of 90 million are ready to go to war, and we are not afraid of death because when we die we will go to heaven because we are oppressed by the oppressors. The Israelis will not.”
In Qom, Hashem Hosseini Bushehri, the Friday prayer leader, denounced Israeli oppression at length. He said: “We too must stand against Israel’s crimes with initiative and resistance, just like the people of Yemen, so that life in Gaza can continue.”
The sentiments expressed show how hard domestically it will be for a divided Iranian government to make the kind of concessions the European governments are demanding. Radicals in the parliament are planning to table new laws calling for Iran to withdraw from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, but that decision in practice may be the prerogative of the supreme leader, and would lead to a massive internal political battle about the direction of Iran.
Iran has been in a state of neither war nor peace since the 12-day war ended with a ceasefire that left the Iranian nuclear programme largely destroyed.
Europe has given notice that it will snap back the sanctions unless the UN nuclear inspectorate is readmitted to all of Iran’s nuclear sites, and not just those that were not attacked by Israel.
Tehran has said it is willing to negotiate the modalities of the inspector’s return, but western diplomats, confident they have the legal and political base to act, say they have been given nothing substantive about how these inspections will work in practice. The Iranian foreign ministry insisted the European powers had no legal basis to act.
The European diplomats believe Iran fears independent confirmation that its 30-year nuclear programme has been destroyed by Israeli bombing, which could prompt a backlash from a population angry at the sacrifice of withstanding sanctions for no purpose.
Iranian diplomats say they will spell out their likely reprisals if the UK, France and Germany press ahead with reimposing sanctions.
Separately, behind closed doors, at the UN headquarters in New York, the UK and French delegations were briefing fellow diplomats about how the unprecedented snapback procedure would work.
Some politicians say the impact of the sanctions will be limited since they were foreseen.
Shirin Ebadi, the lawyer and Nobel peace prize winner, wrote on Instagram that the consequences of sanctions will be “far more dangerous than war” for Iran.
She predicted the value of the national currency would fall even further, infrastructure would fail, poverty would increase, and social crises would spread, adding that the Islamic republic was the main culprit of this situation.
Iran is also debating the impact of the return of the sanction resolutions that do not directly target Iran’s oil, gas and petrochemical industries or even banks and financial institutions. Most of these resolutions impose restrictions in the military and nuclear industries, especially on the buying and selling of weapons, and call on governments to exercise greater oversight and monitoring of Iran’s transactions and shipments to prevent their use in developing Iran’s nuclear and missile industries.
In a wider political change, if the sanctions are reinstated Iran will be recognised as a country violating international laws and subject to chapter seven of the UN charter. Iran’s entire nuclear programme will be declared illegal.