Rather than being a celebrated landmark deal between Iran and China, the reported $400 billion, 25-year deal has brought a great deal of controversy to the Hassan Rouhani administration.
When news of the deal first broke, one of the first critics was former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who asked, “Are you guys the owner of the country that, without informing the nation, you hand its purse to other countries?” He added, “We had a revolution so that no issue, especially an important issue, would be hidden from the public and no one would see themselves as the owner of the nation.”