They admit the economic weapon is their Achilles heel. The Iranian regime doesn’t care how many of its people are killed. It doesn’t care how many of its people suffer. But they do care about money. Money to pay its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah. Money to send their kids to live lives of luxury in the west. Money to buy luxury homes in London. The so called revolution runs on money. Destroy Irans oil pipelines, oil fields, refineries, oil ports, and the war is won. The Iranian people aided by western liberals installed the theocracy. We don’t owe the Iranians anything until they get rid of the theocracy.
Excellent reporting on the secret letter Mehdi. Your insight into Mojtaba's 'red line' on nuclear talks perfectly contextualizes this coordinated loyalty campaign. It is fascinating to watch the pragmatic wing of the state collide with Mojtaba’s ideology. I recently published a profile on Mojtaba's background, and when you look at his roots in the Qom Seminary and his long history with the IRGC, his refusal to compromise makes perfect sense; he even criticized his father’s 2003 nuclear fatwa. The US strikes may have forced a 'unifying effect' among the elites, seeing Reformist and Principlist factions join hands.
As David Ignatius put it rather succinctly recently, “the negotiations have the characteristics of both impossibility and inevitability”.
As I read academic analysis and journalist coverage from members of the diaspora - that is to say those with the deepest knowledge, understanding, and direct interests at stake - I am reminded once more of this framing.
My own intuition, which is worth very little indeed, is that it’s easier to see ways in which the “impossible” yields to the “inevitable”. Preferences must ultimately yield to constraints.
The context around constraints is straightforward: the political, economic, and institutional pressure did not begin building on February 28th. The pressure and stresses have been building internally and externally for a very long time indeed. The second component is a simple observation about human nature, which is of course applicable to regimes as well as individuals. The instinct toward self-preservation is one of the strongest in all the natural world. Greed not far behind.
To risk survival, whether as individuals or as a government, over uranium today (versus uranium in the future) is a tough logical sell. One is not dying for country here. One is dying for dust.
The U.S. is not, in fact, demanding surrender, arrest, or the replacement of government. It is thus not threatening the survival of the regime or the individuals (outside of noncompliance). Rather it is economic ruin and collapse that most directly threatens survival.
Thus in some sense, the U.S. is paradoxically offering a lifeline of sorts. Many billions of lifelines. What the U.S. is demanding in return is uranium. It is demanding dust.
What is the ultimate purpose and value of the uranium? Survival.
What does the uranium threaten? Survival.
This is the other side of the same paradox.
One could thus argue (and it seems some within the government are), that to risk survival for the sake of uranium is to invert logic itself. It is to jeopardize the ends for the sake of the means.
For my own part, I continue to find certitude about outcomes in the West premature. I think they are poorly framed through oversimplification, and thus ultimately misguided. We don’t know what will happen. Not even the regime itself can be sure.
Agreed we shouldn’t have pulled out of JCPOA, but you hit an important nail squarely on the head, in my view. North Korea is indeed a perfect case study for Iran and for the U.S. It’s a case study in how to use an agreement to buy time and build stockpiles (in their case artillery threatening Seoul). It’s an example of the difference between can-kicking and a genuine solution.
And not for nothing, the enrichment limitations would’ve come off last October. So in a sense, we’d be right back to square one with Trump trying to negotiate a deal either way.
One key difference with the counterfactual is that there would’ve been no sanctions on all these years. Do we think the regime would’ve spent the money fixing the water supply? Or is it perhaps more likely, with owership and control of nearly half the economy, they would’ve spent the time and money stockpiling even more drones and missiles and having even more resources to fund proxies?
Hard to know, but I have a guess.
Would it have been a better or more guaranteed path? Perhaps. Certainly in some ways. It’s entirely possible the regime would pursue a different foreign and security policy. I have some doubts. But it’s certainly true that series of sanctions relief deals didn’t stop North Korea.
We will see a nuclear Iran. After getting bombed, they will look at Libya and North Korea and decide it is the only way to ensure it doesn’t happen again. We should not have abandoned the JCPOA.
It's amazing how the impossible to disguise incoherency of the American positions (though the incoherency of Trump makes good distractions) are ignored, but reactions to American actions are promoted as being signs of 'secret power struggles'.
Now, the Iranian population doesn't buy into the American insistence that they're not living in a democracy (see the university of Maryland's Center for International and Security Studies website) so this isn't propaganda aimed at installing doubt amongst the Iranian population, but more for domestic consumption.
Abandoning JCPOA was an enormous error and it was made because of American infatuation with Israel. Only if USA stops treating Israel as the pre-eminent ally in the area to the detriment of all others will the geopilitics of the region have any chance of stabilising.
Ghalibaf’s statement is a hundred percent true: there are no hardliners or moderates, as Westerners want to believe. They are all deranged revolutionaries, some more deranged than others.
Secondary the flaw in this presentation is its taking at face value that Khamenei Junior is alive and functioning. It is equally possible, perhaps likely he is dead or totally dysfunctional, and the more deranged faction is the one mouthing his words for him. The red lines are those of the deranged faction which is using his prestige to prop up their line. The letter might not have been “leaked” as claimed, but fell into the hands of Junior’s puppeteers when it was delivered to the dead puppet.
They admit the economic weapon is their Achilles heel. The Iranian regime doesn’t care how many of its people are killed. It doesn’t care how many of its people suffer. But they do care about money. Money to pay its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah. Money to send their kids to live lives of luxury in the west. Money to buy luxury homes in London. The so called revolution runs on money. Destroy Irans oil pipelines, oil fields, refineries, oil ports, and the war is won. The Iranian people aided by western liberals installed the theocracy. We don’t owe the Iranians anything until they get rid of the theocracy.
Yes, it is always about the money. The conflict also always reveals factions positioning for power.
Excellent reporting on the secret letter Mehdi. Your insight into Mojtaba's 'red line' on nuclear talks perfectly contextualizes this coordinated loyalty campaign. It is fascinating to watch the pragmatic wing of the state collide with Mojtaba’s ideology. I recently published a profile on Mojtaba's background, and when you look at his roots in the Qom Seminary and his long history with the IRGC, his refusal to compromise makes perfect sense; he even criticized his father’s 2003 nuclear fatwa. The US strikes may have forced a 'unifying effect' among the elites, seeing Reformist and Principlist factions join hands.
As David Ignatius put it rather succinctly recently, “the negotiations have the characteristics of both impossibility and inevitability”.
As I read academic analysis and journalist coverage from members of the diaspora - that is to say those with the deepest knowledge, understanding, and direct interests at stake - I am reminded once more of this framing.
My own intuition, which is worth very little indeed, is that it’s easier to see ways in which the “impossible” yields to the “inevitable”. Preferences must ultimately yield to constraints.
The context around constraints is straightforward: the political, economic, and institutional pressure did not begin building on February 28th. The pressure and stresses have been building internally and externally for a very long time indeed. The second component is a simple observation about human nature, which is of course applicable to regimes as well as individuals. The instinct toward self-preservation is one of the strongest in all the natural world. Greed not far behind.
To risk survival, whether as individuals or as a government, over uranium today (versus uranium in the future) is a tough logical sell. One is not dying for country here. One is dying for dust.
The U.S. is not, in fact, demanding surrender, arrest, or the replacement of government. It is thus not threatening the survival of the regime or the individuals (outside of noncompliance). Rather it is economic ruin and collapse that most directly threatens survival.
Thus in some sense, the U.S. is paradoxically offering a lifeline of sorts. Many billions of lifelines. What the U.S. is demanding in return is uranium. It is demanding dust.
What is the ultimate purpose and value of the uranium? Survival.
What does the uranium threaten? Survival.
This is the other side of the same paradox.
One could thus argue (and it seems some within the government are), that to risk survival for the sake of uranium is to invert logic itself. It is to jeopardize the ends for the sake of the means.
For my own part, I continue to find certitude about outcomes in the West premature. I think they are poorly framed through oversimplification, and thus ultimately misguided. We don’t know what will happen. Not even the regime itself can be sure.
Agreed we shouldn’t have pulled out of JCPOA, but you hit an important nail squarely on the head, in my view. North Korea is indeed a perfect case study for Iran and for the U.S. It’s a case study in how to use an agreement to buy time and build stockpiles (in their case artillery threatening Seoul). It’s an example of the difference between can-kicking and a genuine solution.
And not for nothing, the enrichment limitations would’ve come off last October. So in a sense, we’d be right back to square one with Trump trying to negotiate a deal either way.
One key difference with the counterfactual is that there would’ve been no sanctions on all these years. Do we think the regime would’ve spent the money fixing the water supply? Or is it perhaps more likely, with owership and control of nearly half the economy, they would’ve spent the time and money stockpiling even more drones and missiles and having even more resources to fund proxies?
Hard to know, but I have a guess.
Would it have been a better or more guaranteed path? Perhaps. Certainly in some ways. It’s entirely possible the regime would pursue a different foreign and security policy. I have some doubts. But it’s certainly true that series of sanctions relief deals didn’t stop North Korea.
No easy answers here, I’m afraid.
We will see a nuclear Iran. After getting bombed, they will look at Libya and North Korea and decide it is the only way to ensure it doesn’t happen again. We should not have abandoned the JCPOA.
It's amazing how the impossible to disguise incoherency of the American positions (though the incoherency of Trump makes good distractions) are ignored, but reactions to American actions are promoted as being signs of 'secret power struggles'.
Now, the Iranian population doesn't buy into the American insistence that they're not living in a democracy (see the university of Maryland's Center for International and Security Studies website) so this isn't propaganda aimed at installing doubt amongst the Iranian population, but more for domestic consumption.
Abandoning JCPOA was an enormous error and it was made because of American infatuation with Israel. Only if USA stops treating Israel as the pre-eminent ally in the area to the detriment of all others will the geopilitics of the region have any chance of stabilising.
Ghalibaf’s statement is a hundred percent true: there are no hardliners or moderates, as Westerners want to believe. They are all deranged revolutionaries, some more deranged than others.
Secondary the flaw in this presentation is its taking at face value that Khamenei Junior is alive and functioning. It is equally possible, perhaps likely he is dead or totally dysfunctional, and the more deranged faction is the one mouthing his words for him. The red lines are those of the deranged faction which is using his prestige to prop up their line. The letter might not have been “leaked” as claimed, but fell into the hands of Junior’s puppeteers when it was delivered to the dead puppet.