TEHRAN, Iran — The Iranian parliament’s establishment of a Special Commission for Reviewing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) has turned into a headache for President Hassan Rouhani and the nuclear negotiating team. Yet, despite the ruckus the commission has caused, many lawmakers, lawyers and Rouhani supporters say the whole thing is nothing but a show put on by conservatives who seek to regain power in the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Al-Monitor sat down with former Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi to get a sense of the situation. “It’s very good that parliament is becoming involved in the serious issues that our country faces, and there is no problem with this. But exactly how parliament plans to do this, and whether it wants to discuss details or generalities, are things that we have to wait to see,” said Asefi. He qualified his comments and said, “In the end, though, I don’t think parliament will involve itself in the ratification or rejection of the JCPOA, since doing so will have serious consequences.”

Indeed, what has stirred debate more than the potential outcome of the commission’s “review” is the presence of former nuclear negotiators in its sessions. Saeed Jalili, a conservative who ran in the 2013 presidential election, was never required to answer questions in parliament when he led negotiations in 2007-13. Yet, these days, he and his team see it as their duty to provide answers. In a hard-hitting attack on the nuclear deal before the commission, Jalili outlined what he called 100 “violations” of Iran’s “rights.”

Despite the harsh language, this sort of opposition is not widely seen as a credible threat to the deal. According to Mehdi Motaharinia, a political analyst on international issues, “The presence of Jalili and the former negotiating team is only aimed at showing public opinion that they had also worked hard to make the nuclear file a success, and through their current presence [in the commission], they hope to distance themselves from their own failures.”