Pressed by Hard-Liners, U.S.-Trained Environmentalist Quits Post in Iran

An American-educated Iranian expert on water who returned to Iran to take a Cabinet-level job in the government of President Hassan Rouhani officially resigned in exile Wednesday, a month after having left the country while under pressure from hard-liners.

In a letter posted on his Twitter account, the expert, Kaveh Madani, 36, who had been Iran’s No. 2 environment official, wrote that hard-liners had considered him an outsider and a threat. Members of the security forces had hacked into his computers, he said. He had been called in for questioning in January during the arrests of nearly a dozen people involved in environmental activism.

One of those arrested, Kavous Seyed Emami, a well-known professor and naturalist, died in Evin prison in February under suspicious circumstances.

Madani, the deputy head of the Department of the Environment, a Cabinet position, had been visiting Bangkok in March when a private photo taken 5 years ago in the United States showing him dancing was leaked on the internet. Iranian officials are supposed to adhere to strict laws that forbid dancing. After months of pressure and intimidation, Madani decided not to return to Iran and does not want to disclose his current location.

“I feel things are not getting better but getting worse and affecting my beloved ones,” Madani wrote. “I say this with a broken but hopeful heart. I resign.”

He is the second associate of Rouhani to resign in recent weeks. The mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Ali Najafi, resigned last month after criticism over his presence at a show where grade-school girls performed a traditional dance. He resigned citing health reasons.

The resignations are a sign of the increasing pressure being exerted by the hard-line judiciary, the news media and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on Rouhani and his faction of reformists and moderates after protests in December and economic upheaval in recent months.

President Donald Trump has threatened to withdraw the United States from the 2015 nuclear agreement, a signature achievement of Rouhani’s that the Iranian president said would bring economic prosperity.

Madani had been an outsider in Iran’s closed political system. He had worked abroad for nearly 15 years and was brought in by Rouhani not only to address Iran’s water crisis, but to set an example for other Iranian expatriates to return to Iran.

In another Twitter post Wednesday, Madani wrote that he did not hold dual citizenship, and had done nothing wrong. “I came with the excitement of a young man, love for my land and hope for improvement,” he said.