The new year may have brought with it some signs of progress toward a comprehensive deal between world powers and Iran, lending credence to one of Graham Fuller’s 2015 predictions for the Middle East. However, any movement toward a nuclear agreement must now contend with a potentially game-changing complication: the desire of a new and more hawkish Republican-led Congress to impose additional sanctions on Iran regardless of how the talks are progressing.

The Associated Press reported on Friday that the P5+1 (the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, and China) had reached a tentative agreement with Iranian negotiators on a plan to have Tehran ship some portion of its stockpiled low enriched uranium (LEU) to Russia. The agreement would presumably be along the lines of the arrangement that was first reported by IPS’s Gareth Porter in October whereby Iran’s stockpiled LEU, as well as much of its newly enriched LEU, would be converted by the Russians into fuel for its Bushehr civilian nuclear facility.

If the AP report is accurate, the deal could represent a major breakthrough in one of the core areas of dispute between the parties: the size of Iran’s uranium enrichment program. The P5+1 have sought to limit the number of centrifuges that Iran would be allowed to operate under the terms of a deal in order to lengthen the amount of time it would take the Iranians to produce enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) for a single nuclear bomb if it chose to pursue one (Iran’s “breakout time”). But Iran has balked at the idea of reducing its centrifuge program. However, another element in the “breakout time” calculation (part of the so-called “Rubik’s Cube” of a final nuclear deal) is the amount of LEU that Iran has stockpiled. Were Iran to agree to ship its LEU (which can be fairly easily enriched to levels required for weaponization) to Russia for conversion into fuel rods (which cannot be easily converted to a weaponizable form), then Iran’s “breakout time” could be extended with only a relatively minor –and perhaps even no — reduction in Iran’s current centrifuge capacity.

It should be noted that the AP report contained no specifics, saying simply that “both sides in the talks are still arguing about how much of an enriched uranium stockpile to leave Iran.” It also offered no indication that the deal would motivate the US/P5+1 negotiators to alter their demand that Iran cut its current number of operating centrifuges by over 50%, to 4500, under a final deal. In addition, Iran’s foreign ministry quickly dismissed the AP report, with spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham saying that “no agreement has been reached yet on any of the issues [being discussed] during nuclear talks,” although that denial could reflect diplomatic posturing on Iran’s part.

Other news out of Tehran, however, has offered a more encouraging sign that the sides may be moving closer to a deal. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday argued that Iran should be prepared to accept some limits on its uranium enrichment program if doing so could help achieve a larger aim:

Speaking to an economic conference in Tehran, Rouhani both countered hard-line critics worried Iran will give up too much while also attempting to signal his administration remains open to negotiation with the six-nation group leading the talks.

If “we are ready to stop some types of enrichment which we do not need at this time, does it mean we have compromised our principles and cause?” Rouhani asked.

He responded: “Our cause is not linked to a centrifuge. It is connected to our heart and to our willpower.”

Rouhani’s remarks caused a bit of a social media storm, with some reputable analysts, including Suzanne Dimaggio who heads the Iran initiative at the New American Foundation, suggesting that a final deal is on the horizon.

Important speech by #Iran‘s @HassanRouhani today: “Our ideals are not bound to centrifuges.” Preparing for a deal. http://t.co/f9CB66RT9G

— Suzanne DiMaggio (@suzannedimaggio) January 4, 2015

Additionally, Rouhani seemed to suggest that he could put the terms of a final nuclear deal to a national referendum, possibly in order to bypass potential opposition from hardliners in the Majles (Iran’s parliament) and higher up the country’s religious and political hierarchy. As Juan Cole notes, the results of such a referendum could still be overruled by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but Khamenei may be reluctant to overrule the will of a majority of the Iranian public.

Unfortunately, these positive developments take place amid the rise of a new threat to the ongoing negotiations, not from hardliners in Iran’s parliament but rather from hardliners in the newly installed (as of Saturday) US Congress. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) visited Israel late last month and told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that there would be a vote on the previously stymied Kirk-Menendez bill (to impose additional sanctions on Iran) sometime in January, and that the new Congress would “follow [Netanyahu’s] lead” on dealing with Iran and the nuclear talks. Putting aside the astonishing sight of a US senator pledging allegiance to a foreign leader, sanctions are a clearly decisive issue for Tehran. The imposition of another round of broad US sanctions, even if they are made conditional on Iran abandoning the talks or breaking its obligations under the existing negotiating framework, would strengthen hardliners in Tehran who have long argued that Washington cannot be trusted. The Obama administration has pledged to veto any additional sanctions on Iran so long as talks are ongoing, but that may not matter; Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) told reporters last week that he expects the new Congress to pass a new sanctions bill with veto-proof majorities in both the House and the Senate.

The most recent extension of the talks called for a final framework to be in place by March 1 and for a full deal to be reached by July 1. It seems likely that most Republicans in Congress will do their best to scuttle the talks before either of those deadlines can be reached, putting negotiators (who will meet again Jan 15. in Geneva) on an even tighter timeframe.

by Hooshang Amirahmadi

President Barack Obama’s move towards normalization of relations with Cuba has generated lots of hope and analyses that a similar development may take place with Iran. Jim Lobe, founder of the Lobe Log and Washington Bureau Chief of the Inter Press Service, is one such observer. His recent article offers an excellent elaboration of the arguments. I rarely comment on writings by others, but his article deserves a response.

Lobe writes, “In my opinion, Obama’s willingness to make a bold foreign policy move [on Cuba] should—contrary to the narratives put out by the neoconservatives and other hawks—actually strengthen the Rouhani-Zarif faction within the Iran leadership who are no doubt arguing that Obama is serious both about reaching an agreement and forging a new relationship with the Islamic Republic.”

As someone who has spent 25 years trying to mend relations between the US and Iran, I wish Mr. Lobe and his liberal allies were right, and that their “neoconservative” opponents were wrong in their assessments that after Cuba comes Iran; unfortunately they are not. The truth is that Obama cannot so easily unlock the 35-year US-Iran entanglement that involves complex forces, including an Islamic Revolution.

First, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and President Hassan Rouhani used to tell Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that Obama could be trusted, but after 14 months and many rounds of negotiations, they have now subscribed to Khamenei’s line that the US cannot be trusted. Iran’s nuclear program has already been reduced to a symbolic existence but the promised relief from key sanctions, Rouhani’s main incentive to negotiate, is nowhere on the horizon.

During the meeting in Oman between Kerry and Zarif just before the November 24, 2014 deadline for reaching a “comprehensive” deal, as disclosed by the parliamentarian Mohammad Nabavian in an interview, “[Secretary of State] Kerry crossed all Iranian red lines” and Zarif left for Tehran “thinking that the negotiations should stop.” One such red line concerns Iran’s missile program, which is now included in the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.

In a recent letter to his counterparts throughout the world regarding the talks and why a comprehensive deal was not struck last November, Zarif writes that “demands from the Western countries [i.e., the US] are humiliating and illegitimate” and that the “ball is now in their court.” Partly reflecting this disappointment, the Rouhani Government has increased Iran’s defense and intelligence budgets for 2015 by 33 percent and 48 percent respectively (the Iranian calendar begins on March 21).

Second, Zarif and Rouhani could not make the “beyond-the-NPT” concessions that they have made if the supreme leader had not authorized them. The argument that Khamenei and his “hardline” supporters are the obstacle misses the fact that while they have raised “concern” about Iran’s mostly unilateral concessions and the US’s “rapacious” demands, they (particularly the supreme leader) have consistently backed the negotiations and the Iranian negotiators.

Third, Lobe’s thinking suggests that the problem between the two governments is a discursive and personal one: if Khamenei is convinced that Obama is a honest man, then a nuclear agreement would be concluded and a new relationship would be forged between the two countries. What this genus of thinking misses is a radical “Islamic Revolution” and its “divine” Nizam (regime) that stands between Washington and Tehran.

The Islamic Revolution has been anti-American from its inception in 1979 (and not just in Iran), and will remain so as long as the first generation revolutionary leaders rule. The US has also been hostile to the theocratic regime and has often tried to change it. No wonder Khamenei and his people view the US as an “existential threat,” and to fend it off, they have built a “strategic depth” extending to Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and other countries.

Fourth, several times in the past the Iran watchers in the West have become excited about elections that have produced “moderate” governments, making them naively optimistic that a change in relations between the US and Iran would follow. What they miss is that the Islamic “regime” (nizam) and the Islamic “government” are two distinct entities, with the latter totally subordinated to the former.

Specifically, the Nizam (where the House of Leader and revolutionary institutions reside) is ideological and revolutionary, whereas the government has often been pragmatic. Indeed, in the last 35 years, the so-called hardliners have controlled the executive branch for less than 10 years. The division of labor should be easy to understand: the Nizam guards the divine Islamic Revolution against any deviation and intrusion while the government deals with earthly butter and bread matters.

Fifth, to avoid a losing military clash with the US and at the same time reduce Washington’s ability to change its regime or “liberalize” it, the Islamic Republic has charted a smart policy towards the US: “no-war, no-peace.” The US has also followed a similar policy towards Iran to calm both anti-war and anti-peace forces in the conflict. Thus, for over 35 years, US-Iran relations have frequently swung between heightened hostility and qualified moderation (in Khamenei’s words, “heroic flexibility”).

Sixth, the Cuban and Iranian cases are fundamentally dissimilar. True, the Castros were also anti-American and are first-generation leaders, but Fidel is retired and on his deathbed while his brother Raul has hardly been as revolutionary as Fidel. Besides, with regard to US-Cuban normalization, Fidel and his brother can claim more victory than Obama; after all, the Castros did not cave in, Obama did. Furthermore, the Castros are their own bosses, head a dying socialist regime, and are the judges of their own “legacy.”

In sharp contrast, Khamenei subscribes to a rising Islam, heads a living though conflicted theocracy, and subsists in the shadow of the late Ayatollah Khomeini who called the US a “wolf” and Iran a “sheep,” decreeing that they cannot coexist. Indeed, in the Cuban case, the US held the tough line while in the case of Iran, the refusal to reconcile is mutual. Furthermore, the Cuban lobby is a passing force and no longer a match for the world-wide support that the Cuban government garners. Conversely, in the Iranian case, Obama has to deal with powerful Israeli and Arab lobbies, and the Islamic Republic does not have effective international support.

On the other hand, we also have certain similarities between the Cuban and Iranian cases. For example, both revolutions have been subject to harsh US sanctions and other forms of coercion that Obama called a “failed approach.” Obama is also in his second term, free from the yoke of domestic politics, and wishes to build a lasting legacy. Despite these similarities, the differences between the Iranian Islamic regime and the Cuban socialist system make the former a tougher challenge for Obama to solve.

Finally, while I do not think that the Cuban course will be followed for Iran any time soon, I do think that certain developments are generating the imperative for an US-Iran reconciliation in the near future. On Iran’s side, they include a crippled economy facing declining oil prices, a young Iranian population demanding transformative changes, and the gradual shrinking of the first-generation Islamic revolutionary leaders.

On the US side, the changes include an imperial power increasingly reluctant to use force, rising Islamic extremism, growing instability in the Persian Gulf and the larger Middle East, and the difficulty of sustaining the “no-war, no-peace” status quo in the absence of a “comprehensive” deal on Iran’s nuclear program. However, on this last issue, in Washington and Tehran, pessimism now far outweighs optimism, a rather sad development. Let us hope that sanity will prevail.

Photo: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani greets a rally in commemoration of the Islamic Republic’s 35 anniversary of its 1979 revolution in Tehran, Iran on Feb. 11, 2014. Credit: ISNA/Hamid Forootan

by Djavad Salehi-Isfahani

The decision announced last Monday in Vienna to extend the talks aimed at a compressive agreement on Iran’s nuclear program for an additional seven months has resulted in Iran’s currency taking dive. In one week, the rial lost more than 5% of its value in the unofficial market. The devaluation has clear political and economic implications: it will revive inflation, slow or stop economic growth, and increase the pressure on Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as his government tries to make good on the election promises he made 18 months ago.

But will this soften Iran’s negotiating position? To answer this question, we need to look at the basis of this phase of the rial’s devaluation and what it means for ordinary Iranians.

The drop in the value of the rial after the extension was announced on Nov. 24 indicates that expectations in Iran for a final deal were high before the deal failed to materialize. This optimism had kept the rial’s value above what the economics of the situation warranted. In other words, rather than being in “free fall,” as several reports in the press have suggested, the rial is actually adjusting to a new equilibrium.

Two major factors have been putting pressure on the rial in the last few months, neither of which is related to the negotiations or the sanctions. The first is the decline of the price of oil, by more than 30% since this summer, which has reduced the already strained supply of foreign currency to the Iranian economy. As I noted in my previous post, prior to Nov. 24, the rial had remained surprisingly stable despite the falling price of oil.

The rial was also under pressure because Iran’s inflation exceeded that of its major trading partners, making Iranian producers less competitive. Prices in Iran have increased by 23% since Rouhani’s election in June 2013 when the rial traded around 31,000 per dollar. All else the same, the rial would have to fall by 23% to keep Iranian production competitive. That would mean an exchange rate of over 38,000 rials per dollar in the unofficial market and 32,500 in the official market. Presently, these rates are at 34,000 and 26,500.

Of course, all else is not the same. The price of oil is lower, Iran has started receiving around $700 million a month of its unfrozen assets, and there have been changes in economic policy. Some of these changes, like the lower price of oil, would require the rial to devalue further, while others would have the opposite effect.

At the same time, although the rial could continue to decline, currently it’s certainly not in free fall.

An overlooked fact in Western press reports on this issue is that the Rouhani government, populated in part by economists focused on the competitiveness of Iranian producers, had signaled its intention to officially devalue the rial before the Nov. 24 extension was announced. Indeed, officials spoke publicly last month about a (modest) 7.5% increase in the official exchange rate to be used in the 1394 (2015/2016) budget to 28,500 rials to the dollar.

Now on to that burning question: How long will this crisis last?

The pace of devaluation in the free market has quickly slowed down—the rial even rose against the dollar on Dec. 1—but as I mentioned earlier, further drops in the value of the rial are still possible as the reality of the lower price of oil sinks in.

Devaluation is a sign of an underlying imbalance in the economy, so when it happens, people are naturally alarmed. But it is also part of the solution to the same imbalances that need correcting. Consider, for example, that a cheaper rial is good for production and employment, even in a poor business environment hampered by international sanctions and domestic impediments to production, which business people refer to as “internal sanctions.”

Devaluations also redistribute income. In the short-run, inflation, which dropped last year below 20%, will rise as prices for goods bought and sold at the unofficial rate increase. The burden of the higher inflation will fall primarily on people living on fixed incomes, on the public payroll, and those who travel abroad or send money to their children abroad—all of whom compose the better part of the middle class.

Unlike former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Rouhani does not believe in directly paying the poor, so what happens to this segment—about 10-20%— of the Iranian population is less certain. Wages of unskilled workers usually increase with inflation, though not always in tandem. They also rise with demand for labor, which could get a boost from devaluation. However, the 30% increase in the price of bread that was quietly implemented earlier this week, on Dec. 1, will hurt the poor disproportionately, as it was put through without any compensatory mechanism.

Of course, if the Rouhani government is forced to reduce the country’s much larger energy subsidies to balance its budget in the face of falling oil revenues, it may ultimately have to swallow its pride and take up the Ahmadinejad cash transfer mechanism, which Rouhani strongly criticized during his presidential campaign.

Ultimately, the drop in the price of oil will result in lower economic growth and loss of income across the country. But there is no policy that can fully compensate for a large decline in the terms of trade, which the recent decline in the price of oil represents—there are only good and bad policy responses. Allowing the rial to devalue is a good start, but not enough. The government should also be planning policies to help domestic producers rise to the occasion and measures required to protect the poor as prices for basic goods such as bread and energy rise.

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by Ariane Tabatabai

With the November 24 deadline for a comprehensive deal between world powers and Iran on the country’s nuclear program now behind us, the negotiating teams have returned to their capitals to debate next steps. They will reconvene in Oman in early December to continue their efforts to strike a deal in seven months.

The extension represents both good and bad news. It shows once again that the parties truly want a final deal and that they are ready to take up the task. At the same time, the prolonged timeframe for a deal won’t be welcomed by various factions back home, who now have more time and room to derail the process altogether.

Indeed, as the negotiating teams were working around the clock to try to bridge the remaining gaps, various groups in Tehran and Washington, as well as in Tel Aviv and Riyadh, were working to get their own concerns onto the negotiating table.

In the United States, some influential members of Congress believe that Iran is in a comfortable position, not really seeking a solution but rather an indefinite extension of the talks to get sanctions relief. But as noted by Secretary of State John Kerry from Vienna on the day the extension was announced, Iran has been complying with the interim deal concluded in November 2013. In fact, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released a report the same day showing that key elements of the Iranian nuclear program remain suspended. Tehran, then, is not just kicking the can down the road.

Powerful Iranian figures also have concerns about the extension. They believe that the interim Joint Plan of Action (JPOA), signed last year in Geneva, has effectively suspended important parts of the country’s nuclear program without giving Iran much back in return. However, they are also ignoring an important element of the process: The JPOA has granted Tehran access to some of its frozen assets, as it slowly prepares to reopen its market to international business, and leave its political isolation.

Over the next few months, critics on all sides will become louder, especially as Tehran and Washington continue to engage in cordial settings, raising concerns among some of their respective key constituencies.

The remaining key issues—the number of centrifuges Iran will be able to keep and operate, the timeframe of the deal, and sanctions relief—will likely be the main points of contention for these constituencies.

Other challenges could also arise in the process, including the interpretation of the JPOA over the next several months and the grey areas it includes. For instance, a couple of weeks prior to the deadline, Iran began to feed its IR-5 centrifuges (currently non-operational) with Uranium Hexafluoride, which caused a serious debate among nuclear experts. According to David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security, this act was a violation of the interim deal. Others, however, including Jeffrey Lewis at the Monterey Institute, rejected the charge, stating that the JPOA does in fact allow Iran to pursue research and development, including this activity. Expectedly, Iran denied that it had failed to uphold its end of the bargain and the US State Department ultimately backed up the Iranian position.

However, while key components of the Iranian program, including the installation of new centrifuges or further work on the Arak heavy water reactor, are suspended under the JPOA, Tehran continues its research and development. This means that a new generation of centrifuges could add fuel to the fire. Ideally, Iran would refrain from such activities while the talks are ongoing. But while such a step would be received positively on the international stage, thereby aiding the confidence-building process, domestically, it would backfire. It would provide conservatives and other hard-liners in Tehran with more ammunition to shoot at the negotiating team and the government generally.

Indeed, balancing international and domestic priorities and expectations is going to constitute a major challenge for Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as the talks continue. If his government is to make any concessions, it needs to show its domestic constituencies that it is not giving up and still making progress on the nuclear program.

The good news is that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the highest authority in Iran, continues to back the negotiating process. He reiterated his support for the negotiators led by Foreign Minister Javad Zarif on Nov. 25, the day after the deadline was missed, saying that Zarif and his team remained standing even as the West tried to force them to kneel. This crucial statement, which reiterated his deep mistrust of the West, came amid increasing pressure from hard-liners in Tehran and will serve in quieting them down for a while.

But as they key countries of Iran and the United States continue to engage, the prospect of prolonged détente, and especially rapprochement between the two long-time adversaries will result in the unity of four unlikely stakeholders—hard-liners in Tehran and Washington, as well as Riyadh and Tel Aviv—in opposing improved US-Iran relations, for their own reasons.

Meanwhile, the stakes are higher than ever. President Obama, who will be dealing with a Republican-dominated Congress as of January, needs a major foreign policy achievement before his term is up in 2016. In the meantime, his ability to effectively “defeat and ultimately destroy” Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria—another defining element of is presidential legacy—will inevitably be influenced by the outcome of the talks. On the Iranian side, by the new deadline of July 1, 2015, the Iranian president will have spent the better half of his first term almost entirely focused on the nuclear issue, essentially rendered unable to seriously advance other items on his agenda.

In other words, both presidents have been banking on a historic deal, but while the extension of the talks allows Tehran and the West to continue engaging, thereby building the trust necessary for a final accord, it also means more time and room for detractors to sabotage the process.

Ariane Tabatabai is an Associate at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center and a columnist for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 

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by Robert E. Hunter

It’s too early to tell all there is to be told about the negotiations in Vienna between the so-called P5+1 and Iran on the latter’s nuclear program. The “telling” by each and every participant of what happened will surely take place in the next several days, and then better-informed assessments can be made. As of now, we know that the talks did not reach agreement by the November 24 deadline—a year after the interim Joint Plan of Action was agreed—and that the negotiators are aiming for a political agreement no later than next March and a comprehensive deal by June 30.

This is better than having the talks collapse. Better still would have been a provisional interim fill-in-the-blanks memorandum of headings of agreement that is so often put out in international diplomacy when negotiations hit a roadblock but neither side would have its interests served by declaring failure.

An example of failing either to set a new deadline or to issue a “fill in the blanks” agreement was vividly provided by President Bill Clinton’s declaration at the end of the abortive Camp David talks in December 2000. He simply declared the talks on an Israeli-Palestinian settlement as having broken down, rather than saying: progress has been made, here are areas of agreement, here is the timetable for the talks to continue, blah, blah. I was at dinner in Tel Aviv with a group of other American Middle East specialists and Israel’s elder statesman, Shimon Peres, when the news came through. We were all nonplussed that Clinton had not followed the tried and true method of pushing off hard issues until talks would be resumed, at some level, at a “date certain,” which had been the custom on this diplomacy since at least 1981. One result was such disappointment among Palestinians that the second intifada erupted, producing great suffering on all sides and a setback for whatever prospects for peace existed. Poor diplomacy had a tragic outcome.

This example calls for a comparison of today’s circumstances with past diplomatic negotiations of high importance and struggles over difficult issues. Each, it should be understood, is unique, but there are some common factors.

Optimism

The first is the good news that I have already presented: the talks in Vienna did not “break down” and no one walked away from the table in a huff. The other good news is that the official representatives of the two most important negotiators, the United States and Iran, clearly want to reach an agreement that will meet both of their legitimate security, economic, and other interests. Left to themselves, they would probably have had a deal signed, sealed, and delivered this past weekend if not before. But they have not been “left to themselves,” nor will they be, as I will discuss below.

Further good news is that all the issues involving Iran’s nuclear program have now been so masticated by all the parties that they are virtually pulp. If anything is still hidden, it is hard to imagine, other than in the minds of conspiracy theorists who, alas, exist in abundance on any issue involving the Middle East. A deal to be cut on specifics? Yes. New factors to consider? Highly unlikely.

Even more good news is that the United States and the other P5+1 countries (US, UK, Russia, China, France plus Germany), have got to know much better than before their official Iranian counterparts and overall Iranian interests, perspectives, and thinking (US officials, long chary of being seen in the same room with “an Iranian,” lag behind the others in this regard). We can hope that this learning process has also taken place on the Iranian side. This does not mean that the actual means whereby Iran takes decisions—nominally, at least, in the hands of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei—is any less opaque. But even so, there is surely greater understanding of one another—one of the key objectives of just about any diplomatic process.

A partial precedent can be found in US-Soviet arms control and other negotiations during the Cold War. The details of these negotiations were important, or so both sides believed, especially what had to be a primarily symbolic fixation with the numbers of missile launchers and “throw-weight.” This highly charged political preoccupation took place even though the utter destruction of both sides would be guaranteed in a nuclear war. Yet even with great disparities in these numbers, neither side would have been prepared to risk moving even closer to the brink of conflict. Both US and Soviet leaders came to realize that the most important benefit of the talks was the talking, and that they had to improve their political relationship or risk major if not catastrophic loss on both sides. The simple act of talking proved to be a major factor in the eventual end of the Cold War.

The parallel with the Iran talks is that the process itself—including the fact that it is now legitimate to talk with the “Devil” on the other side—has permitted, even if tacitly, greater understanding that the West and Iran have, in contrast to their differences, at least some complementary if not common interests. For the US and Iran, these include freedom of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz; counter-piracy; opposition to Islamic State (ISIS or IS); stability in Afghanistan; opposition to the drug trade, al-Qaeda, Taliban and terrorism; and at least a modus vivendi in regard to Iraq. This does not mean that the US and Iran will see eye-to-eye on all of these issues, but they do constitute a significant agenda, against which the fine details of getting a perfect nuclear agreement (from each side’s perspective) must be measured.

Pessimism

There is also bad news, however, including in the precedents, or partial precedents, of other negotiations. As already noted, negotiations over the fate of the West Bank and Gaza have been going on since May 1979 (I was the White House member of the first US negotiating team), and, while some progress has been made, the issues today look remarkably like they did 37 years ago.

Negotiations following the 1953 armistice in the Korean War have also been going on, with fits and starts, for 61 years. The negotiations over the Vietnam War (the US phase of it) dragged on for years and involved even what in retrospect seem to have been idiocies like arguments over the “shape of the table.” They came to a conclusion only when the US decided it was time to get out—i.e., the North Vietnamese successfully waited us out. Negotiations over Kashmir have also been going on, intermittently, since the 1947 partition of India. The OSCE-led talks on Nagorno-Karabakh (Armenia versus Azerbaijan) have gone on for about two decades, under the nominal chairmanship of France, Russia, and the United States. All this diplomatic activity relates to a small group of what are now called “frozen conflicts,” where negotiations go on ad infinitum but without a lot of further harm done.

But with the exception of the Vietnam talks, all the other dragged-out talking has taken place against the background of relatively stable situations. Talks on Korea go nowhere, but fighting only takes place in small bursts and is not significant. Even regarding the Palestinians, fighting takes place from time to time, including major fighting, but failure to get a permanent end of hostilities does not lead to a fundamental breakdown of “stability” in the Middle East, due to the tacit agreement of all outside powers.

Dangers of Delay

The talks on the Iranian nuclear program, due to restart in December, are different. While they are dragging along, things happen. Sanctions continue and could even be increased on Iran, especially with so many “out for blood” members of the incoming 114^th US Congress. Whether this added pressure will get the US a better deal is debatable, but further suffering for the Iranian people, already far out of proportion to anything bad that Iran has done, will just get worse. Iran may also choose to press forward with uranium enrichment, making a later deal somewhat—who knows how much—more difficult to conclude and verify. Israel will have calculations of its own to make about what Iran is up to and whether it should seriously consider the use of force. And chances for US-Iranian cooperation against IS will diminish.

So time is not on the side of an agreement, and any prospects of Iranian-Western cooperation on other serious regional matters have been further put off—a high cost for all concerned.

Due to the contentious domestic politics on both sides, the risks are even greater. In Iran, there are already pressures from the clerical right and from some other nationalists to undercut both the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, and the lead negotiator, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, both of whom, in these people’s eyes, are now tainted. We can expect further pressures against a deal from this quarter.

The matter is at least as bad and probably worse on the Western side—more particularly, on the US side. The new Congress has already been mentioned. But one reason for consideration of that factor is that, on the P5+1 side of the table, there have not just been six countries but eight, two invisible but very much present, and they are second and third in importance at the table only behind the US itself: Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Both countries are determined to prevent any realistic agreement with Iran on its nuclear program, even if declared by President Barack Obama, in his judgment, to satisfy fully the security interests of both the United States and its allies and partners, including Israel and the Gulf Arabs. For them, in fact, the issue is not just about Iran’s nuclear program, but also about the very idea of Iran being readmitted into international society. For the Sunni Arabs, it is partly about the struggle with the region’s Shi’as, including in President Bashar Assad’s Syria but most particularly in Iran. And for all of these players, there is also a critical geopolitical competition, including vying for US friendship while opposing Iran’s reemergence as another regional player.

The United States does not share any of these interests regarding Sunni vs. Shi’a or geopolitical competitions among regional countries. Our interests are to foster stability in the region, promote security, including against any further proliferation of nuclear weapons (beginning with Iran), and to help counter the virus of Islamist fundamentalism. On the last-named, unfortunately, the US still does not get the cooperation it needs, especially from Saudi Arabia, whose citizens have played such an instrumental role in exporting the ideas, money, and arms that sustain IS.

Thus it is to be deeply regretted, certainly by all the governments formally represented in the P5+1, that efforts to conclude the talks have been put off. The enemies of agreement, on both sides, have gained time to continue their efforts to prevent an agreement—enemies both in Iran and especially in the United States, with the heavy pressures from the Arab oil lobby and the Israeli lobby in the US Congress.

What happens now in Iran can only be determined by the Iranians. What happens with the P5+1 will depend, more than anything else, on the willingness and political courage of President Obama to persevere and say “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” to the Gulf Arab states, Israel, and their allies in the United States, and do what he is paid to do: promote the interests and security of the United States of America.

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by Henry Johnson

The group that calls itself the Islamic State (IS), beyond its doctrinaire propaganda and lurid beheadings, is beginning to uproot the foundations of order in the Middle East, and the United States has decided to not sit idly by. In conjunction with an airstrike campaign of uncertain value in Syria, President Obama has gained congressional authority for the equally dubious plan of arming and training moderate Syrian rebels in order to wage counteroffensives specifically against IS (aka ISIL or ISIS). For every recruit this moderate force picks up, IS will surely double that number as long as Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad stays in power. The incineration of civilians by his barrel bombs, the rape of Syrian women by pro-Assad militants, and America’s seeming unwillingness to do anything has produced despairing conditions in which segments of the Syrian population welcome or at least tolerate the rule of a group like IS. Assad has also so far refused to resign or share power, thereby sabotaging past attempts to solve the crisis politically. His uncompromising position and aptitude for merciless civilian targeting has at once derailed diplomatic efforts and radicalized Syrians. To stabilize the country, the US must convince Iran to end its support for the regime, support which, under close examination, is less than assured. Indeed, Iran has structured its outsized involvement in Syria by decentralizing power away from Assad while nonetheless strengthening his regime. This strategy has given Tehran the option of eventually discarding Assad without forfeiting instruments of power.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has mobilized a network of Shia militias to intervene in Syria. Calling upon Hezbollah, as well as smaller yet no less deadly militias from Iraq, Iran bolstered Assad’s military in time for IS and other extremist rebels to fracture the opposition and retard its momentum. This militant network answers to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and, under his jurisprudence and the patronage of the IRGC, fights for a Shia cause quite distinct from Assad. This strategy has safeguarded Iran’s power in the country without tying it to the Assad government, resulting in significant space for diplomatic maneuvering. Iran spent years refining this strategy in Iraq, where it built small, highly loyal militias to drive Iranian interests in the country without committing it to any one particular Iraqi party. This enabled Iran to engineer the election of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, finesse his resignation, indirectly attack US forces, and unofficially support US airstrikes this August. Iran will abandon Assad if the US can guarantee its interests better than the Syrian leader.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani intimated as much in a speech at the recent United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). President Rouhani proposed as leaders of a coalition against extremism certain “moderate politicians” in the region, who “are neither anti-Western nor pro-Western…They do not absolve the West from its misdeeds, but are also aware of their own failings.” He added, “The right solution to this quandary comes from within the region…with international support.” His conciliatory tone transcended the conventionally rancorous discourse vis-à-vis the West of post-revolution political elites in Iran. Significantly, he did not so much as mention the Syrian government, let alone present it as integral to a successful anti-IS campaign. This omission demonstrated Iran’s growing detachment from the Assad regime. By contrast, in his bristling UNGA speech, Russia’s foreign minister spared no sentence in censuring US policies and insisted, “the struggle against terrorists in the territory of Syria should be structured in cooperation with the Syrian government.”

However important an anti-IS campaign is to its security, Iran’s conflicted political establishment might rebuff an invitation to join the US-led fight. In a blustery interview with state-run television, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei divulged that US State Department officials had privately asked Iran to join the coalition—a claim denied by the US—and proudly iterated the government’s negative reply. His statements may form part of a negotiating strategy to link Iranian assistance in regional security to more favorable terms on Iran’s nuclear program. Or they may reflect Khamenei’s fear that the US will ultimately turn its rebel allies in the Free Syrian Army against Assad without consulting the Islamic Republic. Although defending Assad is Iran’s default position, even the IRGC commanders advising him must question the utility of his hollowed state apparatus and tattered military; they cannot endlessly compensate for his losses. At this point, Iran presumably pursues two strategic goals in Syria—arresting the growth of extremist Sunni ideologies (i.e. IS) and preserving convenient access to Hezbollah through partial territorial control of the country. Under the rising political and financial costs of propping up a regime increasingly unable to achieve either goal, Iran will look more favorably in the coming year upon cooperating with the US and reaching a settlement with the moderate opposition. If tacitly allowing Iran to preserve strategic options in Syria sounds unpalatable, one might consider the likelihood that Iran would rather burn the country to the ground than lose its foothold.

The Iranian government, steeped in a revolutionary legacy of anti-imperialism and enmity to the US, will never submit to a US-dominated framework addressing the volcanic problems of the Middle East. At best, the two powers can strike a détente, depending upon the outcome of nuclear negotiations. The timing for a minimal reconciliation between the US and Iran is, nevertheless, opportune. Mounting pressure in the US to pass off responsibility for regional order suggests so, demonstrated by public aversion to, first, humanitarian intervention in Syria and, second, to a US combat mission against IS. In order to successfully manage this trend, the US must include Iran in its plans for the future of Middle East security. To not do so risks engulfing the region in greater chaos. Barring Iran from any attempts to combat IS or depose Assad will only lead the country to operate independently and in opposition to those efforts. Such exclusion will exalt Assad’s value to the Iranians, prolonging his longevity and further embittering a Sunni population already preyed upon by IS and its lesser variants. As remote of a possibility as stability in Syria is, it will come at a price no lower than US-Iranian cooperation.

Henry Johnson is a writer and analyst of Middle East affairs with a focus on Iranian foreign policy and politics.

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by Peter Jenkins

Seyed Hossein Mousavian, the lead author of Iran and the United States: An Insider’s View on the Failed Past and the Road to Peace, has two objectives: to help American readers understand the Iranian perspective on the fraught US-Iranian relationship, and to advocate a sustained attempt to break the cycle of hostility that was triggered by the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Such is the suspicion on both sides of this relationship that some readers may wonder about the extent to which Mousavian’s descriptions of the Iranian perspective can be trusted. This reviewer’s opinion is that Mousavian—a former Iranian ambassador who has been living in the US since 2009—whom the reviewer has known since 2004, is not trying to pull wool over anyone’s eyes. There is corroborating evidence for much of the information he advances. If in places the reader senses that he or she is not getting the full story, a respectable explanation is to hand: those who have worked at the heart of a government, as Mousavian has done, are bound to be “economical” with certain truths, as a British cabinet secretary once put it.

The Iranian political establishment can be reduced, simplistically, to two broad currents. The first contains those who nurture so great a sense of grievance towards the US, and so deep a mistrust, that they have no wish to end the intermittent cold war of the last 35 years. In the second current are those who understand that nurturing grievances is futile, who recognise that the US has legitimate grievances of its own, and who believe that a measure of détente is in the interest of both countries.

Mousavian belongs to the second current. So do Iran’s president since August 2013, Hassan Rouhani, and his foreign minister and chief nuclear negotiator, Mohammed Javad Zarif. Iran’s ultimate decision-maker and religious leader, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, straddles the two camps. He is deeply distrustful of the United States, which he suspects of being bent on the overthrow of the Islamic Republic and of having no interest in détente, but he is ready to give the second current opportunities to prove him wrong.

Iran’s president from 2005-13, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—who created a deplorable impression in the West, and gifted Israeli propagandists, by denying the reality of the Holocaust—came to office as a member of the first current, a “hard-liner.” But one of the revelations of this book is that he made more attempts than any previous leader to engineer a thaw in relations with the United States.

Mousavian’s intriguing thesis is that Ahmadinejad believed that achieving détente would be so popular with Iranian voters that it would help him to become Iran’s equivalent of Vladimir Putin.

Amb. Mousavian was the spokesman for Iran in the negotiations over its nuclear program with the international community 2003-05.

The middle section of the book is given over to an account of the US-Iranian relationship from the author’s first-hand experience. Mousavian does not flinch from addressing all the episodes that have generated a sense of grievance on one side or the other, from cataloguing the false starts and missed opportunities, or from exploring the incidents that have set back relations just when an improvement seemed to be in the offing.

He has been so well connected to several leaders of Iran’s nezam (establishment) during most of the last 35 years that these chapters amount to a fascinating story, told from the inside of a political system that many foreigners find opaque.

It is somewhat remarkable how often relations have been set back just when it seemed that a thaw was about to set in. In 1992, intelligence about Iranian nuclear purchases undermined the good will created by Iran’s intercessions to secure the release of US hostages in the Lebanon. In 1996, the Kolahdooz incident set back relations with Europe that had been improving since the early 90s. In 2002, the Karine A incident negated the cooperation that the US had been receiving from Iran since 9/11, and it led to the infamous naming of Iran as a member of the “Axis of Evil” in a State of the Union address.

Mousavian suspects that these and other setbacks were not coincidental; they were the work of people who had no interest in a thaw. That theory would account for the haste with which Iran’s enemies have asserted Iranian responsibility for such incidents. But in the last analysis, answers to these puzzles of responsibility have yet to be authenticated.

In any case, how realistic is it to suppose that an improvement in US-Iran relations can be achieved?

Mousavian admits that there are formidable obstacles to a full normalisation, and he seems to doubt that the US and Iran will become best buddies any time soon.

Chief among the obstacles, seen from the US side, are Iran’s refusal to modify its view that the Jewish character of the Israeli state, proclaimed in Israel’s constitution, is bound to result in injustice, oppression and humiliation for Palestinians living in Israel, and has in fact done so—plus Iran’s determination to support a fellow-Shia movement that Israel and the US deem to be terrorist, Hezbollah.

On the Iranian side, Ayatollah Khamenei fears the consequences of anything more than a modest rapprochement. In his view, the opening of a US embassy in Tehran, for instance, would create opportunities for US subversion of the Islamic Republic; and greater exposure of the Iranian population to all things American would undermine respect for Islamic values. He remains convinced that the US seeks the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.

Yet Mousavian believes that there is a middle ground between mutual hostility and full normalisation. He sees scope for the US and Iran to work together, on a basis of mutual respect, to achieve common objectives in areas where their interests coincide. At present those areas include Afghanistan, counter-narcotics, WMD counter-proliferation, energy security, and combating the Jihadi threat in Iraq and Syria.

Developing what Mousavian terms “a framework for cooperation” should be accompanied, he suggests, by an agreement to lock the drawer that contains both sides’ equally long lists of historic grievances, and by a commitment to eschew the rhetoric of enmity and aggression.

The key to taking relations on to a new plane, he argues, is resolving the dispute over Iran’s nuclear activities. This dispute has been fuelled by Israel, partly perhaps for Palestine-related reasons, and by the US’ strategic balance of power considerations.

He believes that a resolution is nonetheless possible. The progress made by American and Iranian negotiators since September 2013, and the alarm that this has caused Israel’s prime minister, suggests that he is right.

Mousavian warns his readers against pressing Iran to cut back its uranium enrichment capacity from the current level, which, objectively, is modest and cannot reasonably be construed as threatening as long as its use is monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). He fears that the US and EU negotiators will fail to appreciate the cultural and psychological factors that would lead the Iranian nezam to prefer no deal to the kind of capacity reductions that the US and EU have been seeking.

The Islamic Republic is rooted in nationalist as much as in religious values, he explains. The nezam is quick to perceive threats to Iran’s sovereignty and national dignity. They would rather defy than be humiliated. They are ready to engage in reasonable compromise but they will not capitulate.

It is these insights into the Islamic Iranian mind-set that are likely to make this book exceptionally interesting for all but students of Iran—and even they may like to compare their views with those of Mousavian.

He will doubtless be pleased if the book sells well, as it deserves to do. But what will please him most, I suspect, is if it contributes to a better understanding of Iran in the US and in Europe, and if it helps bring to a close a quarrel that reflects well on neither side.

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by Shireen T. Hunter

Throughout the recent handwringing about how the US and other Western countries failed to foresee the emergence of ISIS, one factor has been totally ignored, either intentionally or inadvertently: the impact of Washington’s hostility towards Iran, especially its persistent tendency to treat any anti-Iranian movement or idea in the Middle East as either good or the lesser evil compared to dealing with Tehran. This attitude has been coupled with a consistent unwillingness to support positive forces for change and reform in Iran; indeed, actually undermining them by insisting on their meeting preconditions that the West knows can’t be met due to Iran’s internal political dynamics. Significantly, this Western and especially American attitude predated any dispute over Iran’s nuclear program.

The first Western mistake followed the end of the Iran-Iraq war, the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and the coming to power of Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in 1989. Instead of taking advantage of Iran’s vulnerability at the time, as well as Rafsanjani’s efforts both to move Iran towards moderation and openness domestically and internationally and to reach out to the West to help him achieve these goals, the United States chose to put all of its eggs into Saddam Hussein’s basket and adamantly refused to acknowledge his many transgressions—against Iraq’s neighbors and own people—until his fateful 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Nevertheless, with great difficulty—due to leftist opposition—Rafsanjani managed to secure Iran’s neutrality in the Persian Gulf War, a fact that facilitated US military operations. He also secured the release of the last of the Western hostages held in Lebanon. Yet, instead of encouraging the moderate political trends in Iran, the US under President George H. W. Bush embarked on a policy of containing Iran (soon to be replaced by the Clinton administration’s “dual containment” policy, which was then followed in 1996 by Congress’ enactment of the first oil sanctions against Iran at a time when Rafsanjani was actively encouraging American oil companies, notably Conoco, to invest). This policy of containment was first announced during a trip to Central Asia in 1992 by then-Secretary of State James Baker who declared containing Iran’s influence in the region would constitute a major goal of US policy.

Guided by this objective, the US subsequently bought into Pakistan’s argument that the Taliban would constitute a credible barrier to Iran’s influence in Afghanistan and, through it, in Central Asia as well. Hence Washington did not object to Pakistan’s arming and promoting the Taliban, a step that eventually led to the fall of the Afghan government of Burhaneddin Rabbani and Ahmad Shah Masood, two leaders who supported a version of Islam far more moderate than that of the Taliban. It is forgotten today that the Afghan civil war began with attacks by the Pakistan-based and more radical Islamists, first through Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and, when Islamabad judged him to be too difficult to control, through the Taliban.

Even after the 1998 al-Qaeda bombings of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, followed by the 9/11 attacks and the US invasion of Afghanistan, which Iran directly and actively supported, Washington continued to rely on Pakistan as its key regional partner. Despite massive US aid, Islamabad actively—if covertly—undermined US strategy in Afghanistan while it scorned Iran’s offers to help stabilize the country.

Just as Washington ignored or rebuffed Rafsanjani’s efforts to moderate Iran’s domestic and international policies, it similarly declined to help his successor, President Mohammad Khatami, who promoted a tolerant and reformist Islam and a less confrontational approach to relations with the West and Iran’s neighbors. Thus, holding out for the best—namely, a secular, pro-western government in Tehran—the US lost the relatively good. And when Iran actively helped the US both to oust the Taliban and facilitate the transition that followed, it was rewarded by President George W. Bush with membership in the “axis of evil,” paving the way for new and ever more punitive sanctions.

After the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, Tehran quietly put forward an offer for a comprehensive deal with the US not only to cooperate on efforts to stabilize Washington’s latest conquest, but also to address all outstanding issues between the two countries, from acceptance of Israel and Iran’s support for Hezbollah and Palestinian resistance groups to Iran’s nuclear program. The Bush administration did not even bother to respond. Moreover, fearful that Iran might become the unintended beneficiary of the Ba’ath regime’s removal, Washington essentially stood by as its regional Sunni allies worked to undermine the fledgling Shia-led government in Baghdad not only by denying it aid and formal diplomatic recognition, but also, in the case of some Gulf states, encouraging and supporting the burgeoning Sunni insurgency, including al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), which did not hesitate to attack US personnel, as well as their Shia brethren. Ironically if predictably, Washington’s policy of ignoring Sunni extremists forced Iraq’s Shia government to move closer to Iran.

Of course, the unanticipated insurgency and the increasing sectarian violence that it fostered also derailed hopes by the Bush administration—especially its neoconservative faction—that its “success” in Iraq would lead to “regime change”—either through destabilization or an actual attack—as well. At the same time, however, the administration bought into the idea that the increasingly sectarian nature of the conflict could also be used to curb Iran’s influence, notably by forging a de facto alliance between Israel and the Sunni-led states against Tehran and what Jordan’s King Abdullah ominously called the “Shia Crescent.” Of course, not only did Washington’s acceptance and even promotion of this idea contribute to rising sectarian tensions and extremism throughout the region, but it also failed to produce any progress toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Once again, rather than working with Iran to stabilize Iraq, which would have required exerting real pressure on its Sunni allies that were supporting the insurgency, containing Iran’s influence remained Washington’s overriding priority.

It was in this context that the so-called Arab Spring blossomed and, with it, renewed hopes in Washington to reshape the Middle East, if not by achieving “regime change” in Iran, then at least by weakening its regional influence, particularly in the Levant. Even as the Obama administration publicly depicted the movement as the dawn of open and democratic societies, its closest regional partners—to which Washington had so often and so counter-productively deferred in Iraq—saw it as a way to redress the region’s strategic balance that had been upset by the 2003 invasion and the empowerment of Iraq’s Shia majority.

As the movement progressed from Tunisia and Egypt to Libya and the (thwarted) pro-democracy movement in Bahrain, it eventually reached Syria and the minority Alawite regime of President Bashar al-Assad, Iran’s most important regional ally. While the Gulf states and Turkey led the charge against the regime, the US and much of the West were not far behind. Predictably, however, in its desire to see Assad overthrown and Iran weakened, the US and its allies largely ignored the steadily growing influence of groups such as al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, and similar foreign-backed Sunni extremist groups whose violence toward Syrian Shias, Alawites, Alevis, and Christians has been exceeded only by AQI’s successor, the Islamic State (ISIS).

Thus, for the past 25 years or more, the West—especially the United States—has made containing Iran its overriding priority in the Gulf and has too often seen the Wahhabi/Salafi version of Islam and its violent offshoots as an effective counterweight to Iranian influence. In doing so, it has unintentionally helped create monsters like Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and now Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi.

This critique by no means absolves Iran, Syria, Shia militias, or Iraq’s Shia-led government of their own mistakes and crimes. They have their own not insignificant share of responsibility in creating the region’s current problems and conflicts. And they have to do their part if the region’s problems are to be resolved. But as great powers that claim the world’s moral and political leadership with the power to intervene at will in other countries, the US and other Western countries must be judged by higher standards.At the very least, they need to offer a coherent and positive vision of a functioning Middle East and South Asia.

This requires going beyond the platitudes about wanting to advance democracy and human rights.

While the Western powers do not have a clear vision of what kind of Middle East they want and even less how to achieve it, ISIS, al-Qaeda, and al-Nusra have their own regional plans, based on ethnic and sectarian cleansing as we have already seen in both Syria and Iraq.

In short, until the US and the West admit at least to themselves that they have made mistakes in the region in the last few decades, particularly in their efforts to isolate and weaken Iran, and learn from those mistakes and change course, their efforts at defeating extremism and stabilizing the region are bound to fail.

The West cannot get all that it desires in the region, because political engineering has its limits. But if it embarks on a strategy of conflict resolution—fostering regional cooperation, instead of fighting it; and promoting compromise instead of complete capitulation by Iran or any other local power—its interests and those of the region will be better served. Until such a strategy is adopted and seriously implemented, however, every day that passes will make it that much harder to end the violence in the Middle East and encourage compromise and reconciliation. The same is equally true for the regional players. By pursuing maximalist goals they will all end up losers.

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by Shireen T. Hunter

Another round of negotiations between world powers and Iran on its nuclear program ended without any agreement in sight last week in New York. Many causes for the failure to reach an agreement have been cited, including: the number of centrifuges Iran should be allowed to keep; the still ambiguous status of the Arak heavy water reactor; the few remaining unanswered questions posed by the International Atomic Agency (IAEA) to Iran; and last but not least, the question of when and how much of the sanctions imposed on Iran will be lifted, whether they will be lifted at all, or, as put by US negotiator Wendy Sherman, they will simply be suspended.

All of these issues have certainly impeded a comprehensive agreement. However, they are not the ultimate causes of the failure of the negotiations thus far. Nor is Iran’s nuclear program per se the reason for the tensions in its relations with the West. In fact, the dispute between the West and Iran’s nuclear program is just a symptom of more fundamental disagreements between the two, or, to put it more correctly, between hardliners within Iran and the West.

The real causes of the failure of the negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 [US, UK, Russia, France, China, plus Germany] can be summarized as follows.

1.  Diverging understanding of what non-proliferation is all about.  An underlying problem between Iran and the P5+1 is that Iran sees the non-proliferation issue as a technical and legal question that can be resolved by working out the proper legal and technical solutions. Yet, both historically and today, as with any other arms limitation process, non-proliferation has never been primarily about technicalities. Rather it has always been about power and about securing and then locking in a balance of power that favors one side. In other words, a country or group of countries that have enjoyed military superiority have tried to freeze this balance and thus keep their advantage, whereas those in a less favorable position have opposed such measures until they could reach a more favorable balance of power before agreeing to any freeze.

In the case of Iran, the goal of the West and Iran’s Middle Eastern neighbors is to ensure that Iran would at no time have the capability to disrupt the regional balance of power. This is neither a new phenomenon nor is it solely nuclear-related. A sharp improvement in Iran’s conventional military power would also be viewed with alarm. Even when, under the Shah, Iran was a Western ally and while the Soviets were arming Saddam Hussein to the teeth, there were calls in the US by influential politicians to stop arms sales to Iran.

The nuclear issue is therefore just part of Iran’s containment, as are the sanctions. The dispute has allowed Western powers, as well as China and Russia, to impose sanctions on Iran to severely undermine its economy while sapping its people’s energies and creating social tensions with the aim of implosion and political change. China and Russia may not be interested in a political implosion in Iran, but they certainly prefer a moribund Iran, which they can flood with their goods and manipulate to their own ends.

2.  Iran’s regional policies and its anti-imperialist rhetoric.  The most important impediment to any agreement with Iran is its posture on the Arab-Israeli conflict, and especially its hostility towards Israel. Otherwise, why has there been no Western effort to rein in Pakistan’s nuclear weapons arsenal, which has been growing at a tremendous pace? If the risk of proliferation is a major concern, why has this concern not applied to Pakistan? This has largely been because Pakistan, despite its Islamic pretensions, does not interest itself in the Palestinian problem. In all other regions, Iran has pursued a pragmatic and even concessional policy towards its neighbors; but it has so far refused to openly and unequivocally change its posture on the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is hard to believe that any agreement can be reached with Iran before it is acceptable to Israel, and this is unlikely until some change has occurred in Iran’s approach. However, short of the dramatic act of recognizing Israel, today no softening of Iran’s tone will be sufficient for Israel or at least for its hawks. This is so because Iran has come to justify many of the strategies of Israel and other regional countries.

At the international level, Iran cannot hope to be treated as a full-fledged member of the community of states, while simultaneously calling for its fundamental disruption, even if Iran’s efforts have generally been limited to rhetoric. It is therefore difficult to see how there can be an understanding between Iran and the West until Iran stops its so-called anti-Imperialist crusade and pursues its efforts to reform a decidedly unjust international system through more accepted methods.

3.  The Iranian threat as the excuse for many policies.  The sad truth is that in the post-Soviet world, many countries have used the so-called Iranian threat to achieve a range of objectives. For regional countries, these objectives include justifying their value to the West and receiving financial and military support. Meanwhile, in Western countries, some entities use the Iranian threat to ask for more defense spending and to promote arms sales to regional countries. For all of these players, Iran’s return to the international community would leave them with an enemy vacuum. So they will do all they can to prevent this from happening.

4.  The conflict with the West as an instrument of domestic politics in Iran.  Meanwhile, in Iran too differences with the West, especially the US, have served to sustain a particular vision of what Iranian society and polity should be, and to serve the parochial interests of certain political groups and economic cliques, which benefit from the current conditions and enrich themselves while the country’s problems mount. Any reaching of a modus vivendi with the West would deprive them of their power and of their golden goose. Moreover, the cultural conservatives fear that Iran’s opening up to businesses, tourists and other exchanges would affect the country’s cultural dynamics and undermine their power base.

5.  A more long-term Iranian question.  Beneath all these issues lies a more fundamental cause of friction between Iran and the global powers, which is endemic to middle-sized powers, especially in geopolitically sensitive regions. Since the time of the Greeks and the Persians, the West has had an ambivalent view of Iran, both admiring and despising it. In more recent history, the West’s approach toward Iran was essentially developed by Britain and was based on the idea of keeping Iran “moribund”—alive enough to serve as a potential buffer but not strong enough to pose a challenge. The US has essentially pursued this British policy towards Iran.

This view of Iran today is reflected in Western demands that Tehran help defeat the radical group that calls itself the Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL or IS) while having no say in Iraq or Syria or Afghanistan—an unrealistic and unreasonable standard. The West and other big powers should decide what kind of Iran they could live with. Can they handle a progressive but strong and assertive Iran? Or is any kind of strong Iran unacceptable? If the latter is the case, then there is no chance that sanctions will be lifted. If the purpose were primarily to try moving Iran toward openness domestically and a more cooperative stance in the region, then pressures on it should have been eased long before now. It is sobering to reflect that the sanctioning of Iran gathered speed when reformist and pragmatic politicians were in power. While pressuring measures have likely helped push Iran to the bargaining table over its nuclear program, within Iran these pressures have so far only emboldened conservatives.

6.  The Onus is on Iran.  Every state is responsible for safeguarding its own interests and should not expect others to carry out its aims. Thus Iran’s leaders must now decide what they value most: the country and its people, some vague revolutionary objective, or, even less nobly, their own parochial interests. Life is not fair and international politics are particularly brutal, especially for the less powerful. Bemoaning this state of affairs and calling the system unjust will not get Iran anywhere. Its leaders have to grow wise and protect first and foremost their own country and people. Only then should they think about trying to reform the international system and liberate the oppressed!

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Once upon a time, it seemed that the Obama administration had held off opponents in Congress as well as pressure from Israel in order to press forward with negotiations with Iran. It seemed that President Barack Obama’s penchant for diplomacy was finally bearing fruit and that the United States and Iran were coming to the table with a sense of determination and an understanding that a compromise needed to be reached over Iran’s nuclear program.

These days, the story is different. Almost halfway through the four-month extension period the parties agreed to in July, the possibility of failure is more prominently on people’s minds, despite the fact that significant progress has been made in the talks. Right now, both sides have dug in their heels over the question of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capabilities. Iran wants sufficient latitude to build and power more nuclear reactors on their own, while the United States wants a much more restrictive regime.

Part of the calculus on each side is the cost to the other of the failure of talks. Iran is certainly aware that, along with escalating tensions with Russia, the U.S. is heading into what is sure to be a drawn-out conflict with the Islamic State (IS). The U.S. and its partners would clearly prefer to avoid a new crisis with the Islamic Republic, especially when the they need to work with Iran on battling IS forces, however independently and/or covertly they may do it.

The U.S. certainly recognizes that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani staked a good deal of his political life on eliminating the sanctions that have been crippling the Iranian economy. But both sides would be wise to avoid a game of chicken here, where they are gambling that the other side will ultimately be forced to blink first.

On the U.S. side, there are many in Washington who would not be satisfied with anything less than a total Iranian surrender, something the Obama administration is not seeking. Those forces are present in both parties, and, indeed, even if Democrats hold the Senate and win the White House in 2016, those voices are likely to become more prominent as time goes on.

But many believe that on the Iranian side, this is a life-or-death issue politically for the reform-minded Rouhani, and that may not be the case. It is certainly true that conservative forces in Iran, which had been ascendant under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are lying in wait to pounce on Rouhani if he doesn’t manage to work out a deal that removes U.S.-led sanctions against Iran. It is also true that Rouhani deals with a Supreme Leader who is highly skeptical not only of Washington’s sincerity,  but of the kind program Rouhani’s reform-minded allies wish to pursue on the domestic front. Rouhani’s support derives most reliably from an Iranian public  fed up with the failure of the conservatives to improve their lives. He dare not disappoint them.

But if Washington policy-makers believe that this amounts to a political gun to Rouhani’s head, they are mistaken.  In a just-released paper published by the Wilson Center. Farideh Farhi,  the widely quoted Iran expert at the University of Hawaii Manoa (and LobeLog contributor), points out that Rouhani does have options if the negotiations fall apart.

“To be sure, Rouhani will be weakened, in similar ways presidents in other countries with contested political terrains suffer when unable to deliver on key promised policies,”  according to Farhi.

But he will continue to be president for at least another three, if not seven, years. The hardliners will still not have their men at the helm of the executive branch and key cabinet ministries. Given their limited political base for electoral purposes, they will still have to find a way to organize and form coalitions to face a determined alliance of centrists, reformists, and moderate conservatives—the same alliance that helped bring Rouhani to power—in the parliamentary election slotted for early 2016. And, most importantly, Rouhani will still have the vast resources of the Iranian state at his disposal to make economic and social policy and will work with allies to make sure that the next parliament will be more approving of his policies.

Farhi’s point is important. Rouhani has options and he need not accept a deal that can be easily depicted by conservatives as surrendering Iran’s independent nuclear program. As pointed out in a recent survey of Iranian public opinion we covered earlier in the week, this issue is particularly fraught in Iran. It has been a point of national pride that Iran has refused to bend to Western diktats on its nuclear program, diktats that are seen as hypocritical and biased by most Iranians. That estimate is not an unfair one, given previous demands by the U.S. (and one still insisted upon by Israel and its U.S. supporters) that Iran forgo all uranium enrichment. Such a position would force Iran to depend on the goodwill and cooperation of other countries — Russia, in the first instance — whose reliability in fulfilling commitments may depend on how they perceive their national interest at any given moment.  Other countries are not held to such a standard, a source of considerable resentment across the Iranian political spectrum.

Rouhani has wisely chosen not to challenge the public on this point, but rather commit himself to finding an agreement that would end sanctions while maintaining Iran’s nuclear independence, albeit under a strict international inspection regime. This is far from an impossible dream. The Arms Control Association published a policy brief last month with a very reasonable outline for how just such a plan which would satisfy the needs of both Iran and the P5+1.

In principle, both sides could live with such an outcome if they can put domestic politics aside. But of course, they cannot.

Still, the consequences of failure must not be ignored. With Barack Obama heading into his final two years as President, it is quite possible, if not probable, that his successor — regardless of party affiliation — will be much less favorable toward a deal with Iran. In that case, we go back to Israeli pressure for a direct confrontation between the United States and Iran and escalating tensions as Iran feels more and more besieged by the Washington and its western allies.

Rouhani, for his part, may be able to continue his path of reform and re-engagement with the West, but the failure of these talks would be an unwelcome obstacle, according to Farhi.

Rouhani and his nuclear team have had sufficient domestic support to conduct serious negotiations within the frame of P5+1. But as the nuclear negotiations have made clear, the tortured history of U.S.-Iran relations as well as the history of progress in Iran’s nuclear program itself will not allow the acceptance of just any deal. Failure of talks will kill neither Rouhani’s presidency nor the ‘moderation and prudence’ path he has promised. But it will make his path much more difficult to navigate.

All of this seems to amount to sufficient incentive for the two sides to bring themselves toward the reasonable compromise that both can surely envision. At least, one hopes so.