It was about five years ago that Iran’s expatriates finally gave up hope. Far from a transient aberration, they realised that the regime they loathed was here to stay. Former United States president Barack Obama’s nuclear deal in 2015 merely gave the regime a spring in its step, freeing up vast amounts of cash to ramp up its destructive meddling in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen without improving ordinary Iranians’ lives. The result was the furious anti-regime demonstrations earlier this year — and they, too, were put down.
Until recently, the Iranian authorities had been playing a blinder, leveraging the West’s willingness to appease its enemies to its advantage, and using the nuclear deal to fill the post-Iraq void in the Middle East. Its actions in Syria, where it supports Bashar Al Assad, are tantamount to aiding and abetting war crimes; its funding of Hezbollah and Hamas, and its decision to locate tens of thousands of missiles in Syria and Lebanon, mean that it is now the world’s number one terror state.
It is therefore absurd that so many “experts” in the West continue to support the nuclear deal. It probably worked on its own narrow terms, but made Iran more dangerous in every other respect. It gave up building nuclear bombs, but could focus on overseas adventures and developing missiles. It is unfashionable to say so, but US President Donald Trump was right to tear up the deal. Appeasing expansionist states rarely works.
The fundamental problem was that the West negotiated from a position of weakness. It continues to suffer from post-Iraq and Afghanistan fatigue: Those wars proved culturally and politically ruinous, disproving the conceit that it is easy to impose democracy with no relevant history or institutions. There was (and remains) a huge appetite for almost any kind of deal that kicked the Iranian can down the road.
All of this happened in parallel with the rise of a technocratic, post-national and post-democratic ideology among Western elites, including the US State Department and the British Foreign Office. A treaty, however, ineffective and useless, is the perfect diplomatic tool to signal one’s virtue; a deal is always deemed better than no deal. Then there were the attempts by the European Union (EU) to forge a common foreign and defence policy. The French and Germans were desperate for the commercial opportunities in Iran. The British wanted to be good Europeans. For Tehran’s canny negotiators, it was akin to shooting fish in a barrel.
Yet, the regime, too, made severe miscalculations. It didn’t predict the Gulf Arabs positions.
Most important of all, the Iranians didn’t predict Donald Trump’s election, and then wrongly thought he would soon crumble. They continued to overreach, and it is that which sealed the deal’s fate.
One of the mysteries is why intelligent, pro-American figures such as British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson remain wedded to the deal. Are they simply trying to placate their own officials, having calculated that they cannot fight wars on every front and that Brexit is enough? Or are they seeking to ingratiate themselves with the EU, making support for this deal part of the Brexit grand bargain? If so, they risk bitter disappointment: The EU will take and give nothing in return.
No counter-revolution
The reality is that Europe’s protestations would be useless. Europe can but watch as America flexes its muscles. The situation is far more complex than that on the Korean peninsula, but Iran will be faced with three choices. It could keep on going as if nothing has happened, relying on the help of the EU and perhaps Russia, and clinging to the hope that sanctions won’t trigger a counter-revolution. It could restart its dash to a nuclear bomb, guaranteeing a war. Or it could stage a climbdown, North Korea-style, withdrawing from Syria and curtailing its missile programmes.
Trump’s bet is that the outcome will either be option one — and that this will encourage the Iranian public to make their voices heard — or option three, and that Mike Pompeo will soon be flying to Tehran for talks. Trump could pull it off, or it could go catastrophically wrong. But whatever the outcome, the Europeans must stop lying to themselves: The status quo was not working. It was either a case of a near-certain conflict — if not this year then next — or one last shot at a better, more peaceful Iran.
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London, 2017
Allister Heath is the editor of City A.M. and a columnist.
