Iran’s hard-liners have long claimed that a large number of Rouhani administration officials possess dual citizenship or a US green card, and in late July, a prominent opposition member of parliament finally released a list of 71 such alleged dual nationals. However, the list was quickly dismissed by the administration as lacking evidence; this in turn raised the question of how major a seback the opposition had suffered by not backing up its claims.  

Iranian hard-liners initially raised the issue of dual citizenship among Rouhani officials about four years ago during Iran’s ninth parliament. However, the dimensions of this claim were never clarified until Iran’s 10th parliament assigned an Investigation and Probe Committee comprised of 11 opposition legislators to investigate the issue. The report prepared by this committee was presented to parliament's presiding board and was read in parliament in August 2018; the report also was forwarded to the judiciary. While the report read aloud in parliament indicated that there were 13 to 17 individuals in the administration who had dual citizenship, a second, unreleased part of the report apparently contained a list that indicated that at least 210 individuals in the administration, some in high-level positions, held dual citizenship or US green cards; even Rouhani was accused of having dual British nationality.

In recent years, government opponents have repeatedly depicted dual nationals as one of the biggest threats facing the country — a threat they believe has been exacerbated by the Rouhani administration. Iranian Attorney General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri even described dual nationals as a “potential threat for the country” at one point.

Meanwhile, the administration has repeatedly rejected hard-liner attempts to portray dual nationals as a threat. In May 2018, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry released a report dismissing the claims as false. The opposition, on the other hand, has continuously argued otherwise, claiming that almost all those arrested for espionage in recent years were dual citizens, such as Iranian American Washington Post writer Jason Rezaian, British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliff and Canadian-Iranian Abdol Rasul Dori Esfahani, who was a member of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team.