(Dobbs) Will Iran Swallow Its Plans and Its Pride?

It depends on one calculation: economic prosperity vs regional power.

Although the end is near, we don’t know how near we are to reviving a nuclear deal with Iran, or how far. By “we,” I include the diplomats who for more than a year now have been negotiating it. As the foreign policy chief for the European Union put it, “What can be negotiated has been negotiated.”

Yet apparently there’s still more to talk about. Today Iran’s foreign minister said his side is ready “to lose some things on the nuclear side to gain some things,” but only “if our latest points are met.” The State Department’s spokesman said that Iran still must drop its “extraneous” and “unacceptable” demands.

So is a decent and durable deal around the corner? The answer can only be “maybe.”

An advisor to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said last month, with just enough ambiguity to keep everyone guessing, “Iran has the technical means to produce a nuclear bomb.” The chief U.S. negotiator for Iran, Robert Malley, is more specific, telling NPR last Friday, “Iran is only a handful of weeks away from having enough fissile material for a bomb.”

Only a handful of weeks.

After the U.S. withdrawal in 2018 from what originally was known as the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,” which left Iran’s nuclear program to its own devices, apparently that’s how close they are now to reaching that plateau to build a bomb. It’s also how much time they’ve got left to agree to what the EU foreign policy chief calls the “final text” from the new negotiations.

There are two things that might be decisive factors for Iran to strike a deal, but more that don’t. So if they do say yes, it tells me they’re desperate, because it means they must abandon some of their grandiose goals and comply with most of the original 2015 agreement, which amounts to putting their nuclear program in reverse gear.

One factor on the positive side for the Islamic Republic is the chance to start doing business again with the West, and win some relief from the squeeze that U.S. and E.U. sanctions have put on its economy. Then, a beneficial byproduct for them and us would be, more oil available on the world markets. However, there’s also a reason in Iran for hesitation: while sanctions do hurt a nation’s economy— Russia’s gross domestic product dropped by 4% in the first full quarter after it was punished with trade sanctions and corporate pullouts for attacking Ukraine— they rarely bring a regime to its knees. Especially an ideological regime like Iran’s, hellbent on its long-term goals.

The other factor is the wish of this well-educated, well-heeled nation to be a part of the global community again. But here too, there’s a drawback for Iran: limiting its own nuclear program might butt up against its longing to flex its muscles. Since I first covered the country during the Islamic Revolution more than 40 years ago, Iran has yearned to be at least a regional power— and the Shiite counterpart to Sunni Saudi Arabia— if not a global superpower. 

I see more downsides over which Iran must be agonizing. The first is, Iran has always been deathly afraid that the Saudis will acquire nuclear technology— if they haven’t already— from the United States, which could be used against them.

A second is, the “Islamic Revolution” declared by the then-new Islamic Republic of Iran was just what the name suggests: it was the first modern revolution whose leaders’ stated goal was to export their dogma well beyond their nation’s borders. From when I first came across an Iranian-run training camp in northern Lebanon for a then-nascent terrorist group called Hezbollah, it has been obvious that they have drawn their lines in the sand in as much of the Middle East as they could. They provide arms and money to terrorist forces in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Afghanistan, and the Gaza Strip. Since Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, they also are closer than ever to Russia. As Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace wrote this weekend in The New York Times, “Tehran defines its own interests in opposition to the United States.” The canon in that part of the world is, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

A third factor is, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has stirred up resistance to any rapprochement with the United States ever since he succeeded Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who was the original driving force behind the revolution. When covering Khomeini’s revolution and then the American hostage crisis that grew out of it, I always felt from my own reporting from the street that many, probably most Iranians didn’t actually want the zealously Islamic government they got. What they wanted was to get rid of the Western-leaning Shah, who through their lens was bringing decadence to their nation and brutalizing those who opposed it. The Islamic radicals who took control of Iran were just the horse they rode in on. Then, it was too late to get off.

But if today’s Supreme Leader can convince his people that the West still is out to get them— retarding their economy, making them vulnerable to Saudi rivals, robbing them of their rightful place as a regional power— it could put more of the population on his side. As Eric Hoffer wrote in The True Believer, “Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents.”

A fourth factor is what a European negotiator told the Carnegie Endowment’s Sadjadpour about Iran’s leaders: “They don’t want a different place in the world; they want a different world. It’s no good thinking you can change them.” For more than forty years so far, that has proved to be true. From my experience around the Middle East, where people culturally and historically have a different perspective than we do (in our quick-fix society) about the passage of time, they can suffer the short-term hardships of their isolation for the long-term aims of the revolution.

A final factor is, Iran isn’t just anti-American. It is anti-West. We are infidels. Seen through the eyes of the Supreme Leader, who sees the world through the eyes of Allah, capitulation has to be a last resort.

But if a last resort must be endured for a desperate nation’s survival, we might yet get a deal.

Whether a nuclear pact with Iran is better or worse for the security of the United States and our allies is a debate for another day. President Trump thought it was worse. President Biden thinks— with verifiable safeguards— it’s better. I agree. However, as with so many geopolitical decisions, ultimately everyone’s just making their best educated guess.

Hopefully the way I began, saying “the end is near,” means nothing more apocalyptic than the successful end of negotiations.

Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies and politics at home and international crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.