General Introduction

Recent events in the Middle East are reshaping the region’s geopolitical landscape, signaling a departure from long-standing alignments and ushering in a multipolar recalibration of influence. As Iran and Russia grapple with economic strain, diplomatic isolation, and strategic miscalculations, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United States are reasserting their roles as dominant players, forging new partnerships, redefining security frameworks, and raising the question: to what extent? These developments mark a significant moment in Middle Eastern affairs, one that reflects broader global trends in multipolar competition, energy realignment, and regional autonomy. 

This transformation cannot be understood in isolation; rather, it emerges from a confluence of patterns, economic pressures, and shifting ideological currents. This article series will explore the roles of these key players in shaping the future of the region. To assess their influence, four variables will be taken into consideration: trade and investments, arms exports, military deployment, and diplomatic activity.

The Decline of Iran’s Regional Hegemony

Iran has long positioned itself as a key player in the Middle East, exerting influence through a combination of military intervention, proxy networks, and ideological expansionism. However, the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria in December 2024 and Tehran’s subsequent retreat from the Levant mark a significant turning point in Iran’s regional strategy. While Iranian policymakers may frame this withdrawal as a calculated realignment, the reality is likely more troubling for Iran: its decade-long investment in Syria has crumbled, its proxies are under increasing strain, and its geopolitical standing is deteriorating in the face of coordinated countermeasures from the United States and Israel, and regional adversaries like Saudi Arabia and Turkey. This section examines the key dimensions of Iran’s strategic decline, analyzing its military setbacks, proxy vulnerabilities, economic constraints, and shifting diplomatic landscape.

Iran’s involvement in Syria has long been a cornerstone of its regional strategy. Since the onset of the Syrian Civil War, Iran invested an estimated $30-50 billion in supporting Assad’s regime, embedding itself within Syrian military structures like the National Defense Forces, the 4th Armored Division, and the Republican Guard. When the anti-Assad revolution broke out in 2011, the Assad regime was about to be toppled in 2012-2013 but was saved by direct Hezbollah intervention. These investments allowed Iran to turn Syria into a logistical hub for weapon transfers to Hezbollah and other militant groups, strengthening its presence on Israel’s northern border and expanding its “Axis of Resistance.” However, this strategy was severely undermined with Assad’s downfall and the collapse of vital strategic assets, such as the Qa’im-Bukamal border crossing between Syria and Iraq, which weakened Iran’s ability to maintain its arms supply network. 

Internally, Iran’s economic situation has continued to deteriorate, primarily due to international sanctions targeting its nuclear program, regional influence, and support for groups designated as terrorists, alongside domestic mismanagement. These sanctions have curtailed Iran’s ability to fund its regional operations, leading to limited funding resources for proxy groups and limiting its ability to reinvest in other areas, such as Iraq and Yemen, where it focuses its remaining efforts. Iran’s arms exports, a central component of its regional strategy, are severely restricted due to Israeli airstrikes on Iranian assets, U.S. interdictions, and the loss of strategic bases in Syria, significantly impairing its military capabilities. 

Iran’s reliance on proxy forces has been central to its asymmetric warfare strategy, but financial constraints and increased military opposition have placed growing pressure on these groups. Hezbollah, Hamas, and Houthi militias are all under strain. Hezbollah’s political influence in Lebanon is waning, with the Israeli assassination of Nasrallah (Secretary General of Hezbollah)  and with the election of a new president backed by Saudi Arabia and the U.S.. In Gaza and Yemen, Iranian-backed groups have faced heavy losses due to Israeli airstrikes and Saudi-led countermeasures, further weakening Iran’s regional power projection. The rapid offensive that led to Assad’s downfall shattered Iran’s long-term strategy. Unlike earlier crises- such as the pivotal battle for Aleppo in 2016, where Iran, along with Russian support, successfully helped the Assad regime recapture the city from rebel forces during the civil war- Iran was unable to mobilize reinforcements, especially when Iraqi authorities blocked Iran-backed militias. Additionally, Israeli airstrikes targeted key Iranian military commanders – including Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas- further eroded Iran’s command structure and exposed the limits of its ability to defend its allies in the region. Moreover, the growing alignment between Hamas and countries like Qatar and Turkey has reduced Tehran’s role in Gaza, leaving its once-dominant position in the region more fragile.

Iran’s military deployment in the region has shifted significantly, with its forces in Syria, led by the IRGC’s Quds Force (a covert branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), playing a key role in defending Assad’s regime. Iran is now refocusing its military efforts on Iraq and Yemen, strengthening ties with the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Iraq to bolster its influence ahead of the 2025 elections, sway electoral outcomes, and maintain regional dominance. In Yemen, Iran may increase support for the Houthis to maintain leverage over the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a crucial maritime choke point. However, both Iraq and Yemen pose challenges for Iran. In Iraq, nationalist sentiment and political opposition from Sunni and Kurdish populations are limiting Iran’s influence, viewing the PMF as a threat to Iraq’s sovereignty and fear the country could become a client state of Iran. In Yemen, Saudi-led countermeasures, including airstrikes, naval blockades, support for Yemeni government forces, ground operations, and more, are containing Houthi operations.

Diplomatically, Iran faces significant setbacks as its relationships with regional powers become increasingly strained. Despite a temporary rapprochement with Saudi Arabia in 2023, facilitated by China, the broader regional environment remains unfavorable for Tehran, as Gulf states continue to align with the U.S. on security issues, further isolating Iran. The growing engagement between Gulf states and Israel further diminishes Iran’s diplomatic standing, making it harder to rally opposition against Israel. While Iran has attempted to deepen its ties with Russia and China, but these relationships have limits. Russia has provided some military cooperation, but remains cautious in its support due to its own strategic priorities, and China, focused on economic stability, is unlikely to confront the U.S. on Iran’s behalf, leaving it struggling to maintain influence in the region.

Iran’s strategic decline in the Middle East marks a profound shift in the region’s balance of power. The fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, coupled with the retreat of Iranian influence, has exposed the fragility of Tehran’s regional ambitions. Its once-dominant position, bolstered by military interventions, has been undermined by a combination of economic constraints, military setbacks, and regional opposition. With its ability to fund and support its proxy groups waning, Iran’s increasing influence in Iraq and Yemen is greatly challenged. Diplomatically, Iran’s regional isolation deepens as Gulf states align with the U.S. and engage with Israel, while its partnerships with Russia and China remain limited. As Iran retreats from the Levant, the Middle East enters a new era, one where the power dynamics are shifting, and players like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Israel are asserting themselves more prominently, signaling a changing balance of power that could redefine the region’s future.

​​This situation contains the seeds of future conflict. Will resistance be renewed to liberate the Syrian and Lebanese lands newly occupied by Israel, or will the new dominant powers find a solution before this happens? Will Iran mobilize its forces again to spread its regional influence, perhaps to protect its nuclear program from Israeli destruction, or will a new nuclear agreement and entente between the US and Iran defuse the situation? As long as no long-term solutions are found for the Middle Eastern problems, including a fair solution to the Palestinian question, and as Iran’s regional influence continues to wane, a new order is emerging—one that will be defined by shifting alliances and evolving power dynamics.

Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: “Iran Flag from Taleghani Park” by David Sandoz, Image sourced from Flickr | CC License, no changes made

Conservatives and Reformists

Conservatives adhere to the ideological tenets of the Islamic Revolution. Pragmatic conservatives adhere to conservative principles but favor practical social and cultural reforms over ideological fervor. They also advocate for economic deregulation. The reformists represent the ideological left within the Iranian political system. They advocate for economic openness, liberalization, and rapprochement with the West (Mohebali 2016). However, regarding Middle Eastern interactions, reformers seek closer relations with other Middle Eastern countries. The significant principles of the republic are the same for both conservatives and reformists, but reformers are more open to using dialogues and negotiations. They also push to ease tensions and engage in regional cooperation. For instance, Rezaei (2017) demonstrated that the Dialogue of Civilizations by President Khatami (1997-2005), who was considered the godfather of the reformers, offered a complementary vision for a renewed commencement in Iran’s strained relations with the Middle East (Rezaei 2017). Additionally, the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA) alleviated tensions with Western powers and diminished regional discord by indicating Iran’s readiness for peaceful negotiations, thus indirectly enhancing relations with neighboring countries such as Oman and Iraq (Javed and Ismail 2017). During this deal, Hassan Rouhani, another reformist, was the president of the Islamic republic. 

Reformists and Iraq

Historically, Iranian reformists have maintained distinct relationships with Iraqi parties, politicians, and groups, in contrast to those of the conservatives. In a recent interview, Alyasiri stated “Reformists in Iraq align more closely with moderate political forces. These forces are, to some extent, recognized and accepted by Western superpowers” (Alyasiry 2024). Conversely, the conservatives maintain closer ties with right-wing Iraqi powers that the West does not favor. The moderate powers in Iraq seek the stability of the country, recalling resolving conflicts through discussions. So, this Iranian-Iraqi moderate power could be a privilege for Iran to evaluate and reform its regional picture.

Reformist and The Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine)

As mentioned before, Iran’s major principles remain the same every time reformers take control. By way of illustration, Iran extended military and financial assistance to Hezbollah as a component of its plan to mitigate Israeli influence in the area during all reformist presidential periods (Rezaei 2017). Nevertheless, they have tried to maintain a new shape of interaction built on discussions and alliances. In May 2003, a memorandum of understanding about the potential establishment of a free trade area between the two countries was signed during Khatami’s visit to Damascus (Risseeuw 2018). Such agreements were established during reformers’ periods, which could explain their philosophy of how to deal with these countries.

Reformists and the GCC

Similarly, reformers have worked towards cooperation with GCC countries. In 1998, Khatami’s visit to Saudi Arabia represented a pivotal advancement in bilateral relations. This resulted in the 1999 Saudi-Iranian security accord, which aimed to mitigate terrorism, drug trafficking, and organized crime (Rezaei 2017). He also, through diplomatic efforts, tried to bridge differences between Iran and other Gulf countries like the UAE (Momeni 2021). In the same vein, nuclear diplomacy, GCC concerns, and the Hormoz peace initiative during Rouhani’s administration are good examples of reformist cooperative policy. 

Pezeshkian’s international stances and views before the presidency

Pezeshkian, like all reformists, does not debate the fundamental principles of the republic. In April 2019, when he was a parliament member, he denounced the Trump administration’s designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization (Alef 2019). In June 2019, he stated that “the IRGC has dealt a strong punch to the mouths of the United States with what it did in shooting down a highly advanced American drone in the Persian Gulf” (Alef 2019). However, we can infer that he is not internally in favor of the IRGC according to his statement later in June 2024 when he said, while wearing an IRGC uniform, “The IRCG is different from what we saw now” (Eslahatnews 2024). He criticized the Iranian government several times. In 2009, in a speech, he criticized the way that the government treated protesters by quoting Imam Ali, the first Imam of the Shia, “Do not kill people like animals” (Mehrabi 2024). Such stances could offer a clear understanding of Pezeshkian’s belief in the Iranian regime. On the international scale, during his election campaign, he underscored the reestablishment of diplomatic engagements with the West, the restoration of the JCPOA, and initiatives to alleviate sanctions. Pezeshkian contended, “With sanctions, one can perhaps survive, but one cannot progress.” He emphasized the necessity of de-escalating tensions with the West: “We seek good relations with Europe based on mutual respect and equality. The lack of political relations with the United States should not lead to costly tensions and conflict” (Azizi 2024). Furthermore, in his first electoral debate on June 25, 2024, He emphasized the significance of cultivating robust partnerships with neighboring nations as a fundamental aspect of his foreign policy. He also asserted that enhancing relations with neighboring countries is essential for regional stability and prosperity (PressTV 2024).

President Masoud Pezeshkian 

During his first official press conference, Pezeshkian said, “We are brothers with the Americans as well” (Radio Free Europe 2024). Although he asserted that this brotherhood depends on the Americans’ will to seek peace with Iran, his statement shocked many. Once Pezeshkian was elected, he started to move with his and the reformists’ philosophy. On September 10, he visited Iraq. He met with prominent Iraqi officials, including the Iraqi president Abdul Latif Rashid and the prime minister Mohammed Shia’ Alsudani. He also met with the Iraqi political parties’ leaders in the meeting hosted by Sayed Ammar Alhakim, president of the Al-Hikma National Movement, on September 11. In these meetings, he illustrated the importance of Iraq as a significant player in the region in the sense of regional interactions. He also stated, “Iraq remains a strategic priority for Iran.” As a result of this dialogue, Iraq and Iran signed agreements covering areas such as economic cooperation, infrastructure development, education, and security collaboration (ISPI 2024). In his address at the 79^th United Nations General Assembly on September 24, 2024, he expressed a willingness to reopen nuclear negotiations, which could represent a change in Iran’s diplomatic posture (AP News 2024). On the other hand, he denounced Israel’s military operations in Gaza and Lebanon as “atrocities.” He urged the reevaluation of regional strategies and underscored the necessity of sanctions relief while also advocating for the acknowledgment of Iran’s security concerns (AP News 2024). Additionally, the Arab neighbors of Iran are still skeptical about the new president’s capacity to moderate Iran’s foreign policy, particularly its support for militant factions throughout the Middle East. He also mentioned “Iran has consistently sought to improve relations with its Arab neighbors” (Haghirian 2024). 

Forecasting the future

According to Kamrava, it is probable that Iran will continue to develop its political and economic relations, and potentially even its security cooperation, with its neighbors. Raisi’s “Look East” policy and good neighborly relations have thus far succeeded in accomplishing several of their stated objectives (Kamrava 2024). In addition, the agreements between Iran and Saudi Arabia and Iran and Egypt during Raisi’s era, despite the development in Iran’s relations with Qatar since 2017, can serve as a solid and fundamental base from which Pezeshkian can launch to create better relations. Furthermore, in the aftermath of Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination, officials from the GCC and Iran participated in multiple phone calls and bilateral consultations, including an emergency summit in August (Haghirian 2024). The recent stance of Saudi Arabia by crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman who stated “the Kingdom will not cease its diligent efforts to establish an independent Palestinian state” could strengthen the Iran-Saudi deal (Asem 2024). As a result, the Gaza crisis could be another important element to forging closer relations between some Arab countries and Iran.

Pezeshkian and Iraq 

Pezeshkian will be inclined towards moderate political forces in Iraq. This inclination will help to increase the level of stability in Iraq because these forces are more discussable. That would also give Iran more opportunities to enhance its relations with other Western and MENA countries by mediating these powers, such as the meditation of Alhakeem between Iran and Egypt during the Raisi era. 

Economy under Pezeshkian’s administration 

Pezeshkian is aware that one of his most important goals is economic recovery. He is seeking new economic cooperation with GCC countries, Turkey, China, and even the United States. In his first debate, he emphasized the necessity of economic cooperation with neighboring countries, suggesting that shared economic interests may underpin enhanced diplomatic relations (PressTV 2024). Presumably, he will manage good economic cooperation with GCC countries and other countries around the world. The American sanctions will remain, which could be a significant challenge for achieving his economic recovery goal.

Pezeshkian and Israel

Pursuing anti-Israel policies is one of Pezeshkian’s most fundamental principles. Regardless of what he really believes, he will likely remain committed to supporting this Islamic cause, providing assistance to Gaza, Lebanon, and others affected by the Israeli presence in the region, whether through humanitarian, economic, political, or even military means, according to Iran’s vision of support. Iran’s relationship with Israel is a hindrance in its evolving relations with many countries. 

Cultural impact under Pezeshkian administration

In all likelihood, Pezeshkian will try to spread cultural influence across different countries in the region. In this way, he will tie the regional public mind together. This could be reflected in the political interactions. He will also try to enhance the diplomatic envoys of Iran, giving them more space regardless of the former governments that depended on specific non-diplomatic actors to build Iran’s regional relations.

In conclusion, Iran’s presidential election resulted in the victory of reformer Masoud Pezeshkian, signifying a new phase in foreign relations. Reformists, embodying the intellectual left in the Iranian political framework, champion economic openness, liberalization, and reconciliation with the West. Reformers are more open to dialogues and negotiations, aiming to ease tensions and engage in regional cooperation. Iran’s reformists have maintained distinct relationships with Iraqi parties, politicians, and groups while maintaining ties with moderate political powers in the Levant. They have also built new cooperation with the GCC countries. However, Masoud Pezeshkian has criticized the Iranian regime and the IRGC but has also emphasized the importance of diplomatic engagements with the West and the restoration of the JCPOA. He has visited Iraq, signed agreements, and expressed a willingness to reopen nuclear negotiations. Pezeshkian has also urged the reevaluation of regional strategies and sanctions relief while acknowledging Iran’s security concerns. However, Arab neighbors of Iran remain skeptical about his ability to moderate Iran’s foreign policy, particularly its support for militant factions. Under Pezeshkian’s administration, Iran is expected to continue developing its political, economic, and security relations with its neighbors, as demonstrated by Raisi’s “Look East” policy and agreements with Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The Gaza crisis could also be a key factor in tying Arab countries with Iran. He also aims for economic recovery and seeks new economic cooperation with GCC countries, Turkey, China, and the US. He believes that shared economic interests can enhance diplomatic relations, but American sanctions may pose a challenge. Additionally, Pezeshkian will focus on supporting the Islamic cause and supporting Gaza and Lebanon, which could hinder Iran’s evaluation of relations with many countries. His cultural impact is likely to spread Iranian influence across different countries in the region, tying regional populations together and improving diplomatic ties. This could be reflected in political interactions and the expansion of diplomatic envoys despite the dependence on non-diplomatic actors in previous governments.

References

Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: Pezeshkian, taken on July 6, 2024, Photo by AP | Image sourced from FMT | CC License, no changes made

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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

As you know there have been widespread protest in Iran against the regime following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of the morality police. The protests are unique in being led primarily by young people, particularly women. How can the West approach supporting the protests in Iran without applying more economic pressures on the people?

Noam Chomsky: That’s a tricky question. It’s quite true that these protests are quite remarkable: it is mostly young people. The regime claims that the average age of those imprisoned is about fifteen. The young woman who died herself was Kurdish, and there has been harsh repression in the Kurdish areas. There was a prison fire, we don’t know much about it yet, but it could be a monstrosity with the suspicion that the regime set it.

What can the U.S. do? Well, it’s a complicated story. Part of the uprising is against economic difficulties. There are very harsh economic conditions. These are largely a result of U.S. sanctions, and the U.S. cutting off Iran from much of the rest of the world. It is worth bearing in mind that the U.S. is uniquely powerful, and U.S. sanctions are third-party sanctions. Europe is strongly opposed to the sanctions, but they obey them. The threat of confronting the U.S. is quite high, and very few are willing to dare to do so, which means that Iran is pretty much cut off from its natural trading partners. Interestingly, quite generally, U.S. policy is heavily determined by the concentration of power in the economic system by the corporate sector. But in this interesting case the corporate sector is opposed to the sanctions. The energy corporation would love to get into the Iranian market, and the same is true of much of the industrial system. It is interesting that the same thing happened in 1953 when the U.S. intervened to overthrow the parliamentary regime, which is what set Iran on its ugly history since. Part of the arrangement was that the Eisenhower administration wanted the American oil companies to pick up 40 percent of the British franchise, which they were taking over. And the corporations did not want to: it wasn’t profitable for them. They could have made much more money lifting Saudi oil. So, on business grounds the corporations just didn’t want to bother. But the U.S. government forced them to do it by threatening antirust actions and other threats. This is one of those interesting cases where corporate interests and states interests conflict. Even if you look at the state managers, they come straight from the corporate sector, but they have a different picture of policy. For those interested in formation of policy, this is one of a number of interesting cases and it is being replicated today.

Well, that leads to the question of what should the U.S. do? If it harshens the sanctions, that punishes the population and doesn’t punish the leadership. That is quite typical: sanctions harm the population, but the leadership, mostly kleptocrats of one kind or another, find ways to enrich themselves and we see that over and over. The sanctions themselves are at best dubious and, in my view, criminal. And to extend them doesn’t seem like a healthy way to deal with the problem.

My own feeling is that if the sanctions were lifted, it might lead Iran to open up a bit and offer more opportunities for those who are trying to institute some significant change in the highly repressive regime. But that does not fit with U.S. policy. That leaves the U.S. with very limited means to do anything because it has a substantial responsibility for the conditions that are causing the rise of the protests. There are people, friends of mine in fact, who are calling for ending negotiations with Iran and I think, again, that is a very dubious step. That means blocking the possibly of renewing the nuclear arms agreement that the Trump administration pulled out of and destroyed. The options are quite limited. The American people can express support and help in indirect ways. But I don’t see a great deal that we can do because of the nature of U.S. policies. And this is not just today it’s seventy years now.

You have talked about how the 2011 Arab Spring began in North Africa and then inspired similar movements in the region and the world. Do you think that the current movement in Iran has the potential to have a similar effect of inspiring other protests?

Chomsky: Well, the regime has strong means of violence and repression. The Revolutionary Guards are deeply embedded in the regime and their own wealth and status depends on the survival of the regime. And they have the monopoly of force. It is not even clear that the regime could withdraw them if they wanted to. So, I think it is a very hazardous situation. If we take a look to the Arab Spring and see what happened, almost every country was repressed and destroyed by violence, some more severe than others. Syria, of course, had horrible violence. In Egypt it led to the most vicious dictatorship in the country’s history: 60,000 political prisoners tortured, and vast repression supported by the United States. In Libya, it was the three imperial powers, France, Britan, and the United States, that smashed the country and left it a reck. Tunisia was the one partial exception, but now it is declining into a kind of dictatorship. So, the outcomes of those wonderful, amazing uprisings were such that the outcomes turned out quite ugly. It is hard to say what will happen in Iran, I’m frankly surprised it has gotten this far, but we don’t know whether the regime will come down with all its means of force, which could be a real horror story.

Following up on sanctions, how have the sanctions placed on Iran and Russia impacted their relationship over the past few years and how are we seeing the impacts of that currently play out?

Chomsky: In Iran, the sanctions have contributed significantly and are the primary factor in the current economic catastrophe. In the case of Russia, the sanctions are probably harming Western Europe as much or more than Russia because Western Europe and Russia have a very natural alliance. Western Europe has a German-based, advanced industrial system standing over the whole of the region from the Netherlands to Slovakia. It is heavily dependent on Russian minerals, not just oil. In fact, if Europe tries to move towards sustainable energy development, as it must do if we are going to survive, it’s going to be reliant on Russian minerals. Some commentators have described it as a marriage made in heaven. Russia doesn’t have much of an economy. Its economy is about the size of Mexico’s, but it is extremely rich in natural resources. Of course, it has heavy weapons and a scientific establishment, but that is about it. Europe is complementary: advanced science and technology. Germany is the most advanced state capitalist country in the world, but it is very mineral poor. And there is more than that involved in the break down between Russia and Western Europe. Europe is largely cut off from the rich and expanding China-based system extending all through Eurasia. In fact, China was a major market for Europe, and I think it is unlikely that Europe, especially Germany, is going to tolerate this hanging onto U.S. coat tails.

Recently, thousands of Haitian people took to the streets to demand the resignation of the prime minister after the de facto government requested military aid to quell the rising gang violence. Canada and the U.S. have already sent military equipment. How will military assistance impact the current humanitarian crisis in Haiti? What does it mean in terms of Haiti’s sovereignty?

Chomsky: That is a major horror story. Haiti has been viciously tortured for over two centuries for the crime of becoming the first free country of free men in the Western Hemisphere. Nobody was willing to tolerate that. France imposed very harsh indemnity on Haiti, which was unpayable. This was to compensate for the fact that Haiti was France’s richest colony and one of the richest parts of the world before the French ruined it. The U.S. refused to even recognize Haiti. The U.S. was the leading slave society. The idea of a free republic of black men was totally intolerable to the U.S. The U.S. recognized Haiti only in 1862 when it also recognized Liberia, and the reason was strict racism. They were going to free the slaves, but they did not want them to stay here. They recognized Haiti and Liberia to send free blacks there. Most of the liberals supported this including Lincoln. In a way, from their point of view, this was out of benevolence: blacks don’t have the intelligence to survive in an advanced, white society, so it would be just unfair to free them and leave them here. The U.S. decided to help them move to places where there were other backward creatures of man. That was the liberal view.

The right-wing view was much harsher of course. After that came regular U.S. interventions in Haiti. In 1915, Woodrow Wilson invaded Haiti and virtually restored slavery and indentured labor. He established a national guard: a brutal paramilitary organization whose only role was to crush Haiti. The U.S. disbanded the Haitian parliament because they refused to accept U.S. imposed legislation, which allowed Americans to buy up Haitian land and turn the place into an American colony. Under the eyes of the Marines, the new parliament established by the U.S. voted for the legislation by 99 percent. That was hailed in the U.S. as a great victory for democracy, and this pattern goes on and on until the present. President Clinton was one of the worst. He strongly supported the vicious terror of the junta in one of the worst periods in Haitian history. Right now, the country is beyond wreckage. I don’t know what can be done. The country is currently run by murderers and gangs, and it is almost impossible to survive. The West has a lot to answer for, but what can we do? It is hard to imagine the U.S., France, and Canada doing anything given their record.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has attracted a lot of attention in international media in the past several months. But you recognize how the actions of the U.S. towards Taiwan might represent the greater threat to international security. You criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan as inflammatory and the recent Senate bill on Taiwan as virtually calling for a war with China. You point out that in escalating its relationship with Taiwan, the U.S. is following a similar playbook as it did before the war in Ukraine. What do you see as the underlying causes of the seemingly self-destructive hunger for war demonstrated by Congress?

Chomsky: You are speaking of the September 14 legislation proposed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is very dangerous and provocative. The legislation has not been passed by Congress yet; it has just been proposed by the Committee almost unanimously. The legislation calls for turning Taiwan into what they call a non-NATO ally. In other words, it is virtually the same as being in NATO but not without official NATO membership. It is interesting that recently NATO has been officially expanded to the Indo-Pacific region meaning the whole world was at the last NATO summit a few weeks ago. For the first time, NATO invited Japan and Australia and officially extended the reach of NATO to the Indo-Pacific, which meaning everywhere. Taiwan is being proposed as a non-NATO ally and given the same treatment as other countries in terms of diplomatic relations and increasing U.S. military spending and operations. All of this is poking the eye of China.

For the last 50 years, U.S.-China relations concerning Taiwan have been governed by the so called One China policy, which was established in the 1970s and recognizes that Taiwan is part of China. It has held for half a century. But now the U.S. is severely disrupting it, and China is certainly not going to accept it. Pelosi’s visit was bad enough. The Chinese responded by military maneuvers, which were aimed at demonstrating that China could blockade Taiwan and strangle it. And there is nothing much the U.S. could do about that except move on to a terminal nuclear war: we are playing with fire here. This is one part of a much broader U.S. strategy shaped by Trump and it has been sharpened by Biden. The official goal is to, as they put it, incircle China with sentinel states—South Korea, Japan, Australia, and trying to bring India in but India is ambivalent—armed with advanced weapons, precision weapons aimed at China backed by the U.S. The U.S. meanwhile is carrying out enormous military maneuvers aimed at China. The U.S. is sending advanced nuclear submarines to Australia aimed at China. If you look at what is going on in the world this is beyond lunacy. We are facing crises of survival. If the U.S. and China don’t cooperate on global warming, pandemics, or nuclear war we are finished. We have got to move towards accommodation. Moving towards provocation and conflict is beyond lunacy.

The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is the world’s leading producer of semiconductors and uses U.S. components in its chips. The U.S. Congress recently passed a bill that bans all chips with U.S. components in them from entering China. This bill appears to indirectly restrict Taiwanese chips from entering the Chinese market. Do you think this will incentivize China to potentially launch any counter measures in response?

Chomsky: Right now, Taiwan is the major center for advanced chip production, about 90 percent of it. A lot of it goes to China, a lot of it comes back to the U.S., and some goes to other countries. U.S. components are in most of the chips, advanced programming software and so on. If the U.S. cuts off chip exports, that would be very harmful to Taiwan and harmful to China. The only counter measure that China can take, and is taking, is to develop its own chip manufacturing. It will take time, but there is no reason why they cannot do it. It is not magic. They have plenty of engineers, advanced technology, and are training more engineers than we are.

So, we will very likely drive China to pouring more money and research into developing more advanced technology instead of relying on ours. We should be developing our own technology not trying to harm China. In fact, what China is doing is setting up technological schools, about a thousand of them I think, in Africa and other parts of Asia training students in China-based technology. That means that means that the people trained in these schools all over the world
will be using Chinese technology. The U.S. has been trying to prevent other countries from using Chinese technology by force. But China’s way around is to just set up schools training people how to use this technology. This is a very strange competition. It is not to the benefit of either the U.S. or China.

This interview was conducted by Liam Will, Noor Kareem, Andrew Lake, and Ethan Chiu.

It is often believed that Iran’s Islamic Republic and the State of Israel became estranged after Ayatollah Khomeini arose to power during the Islamic Revolution in 1979, but records show key figures in each government felt maintaining a secret relationship would be in the interest of both parties. As a result, millions of dollars’ worth of trade between Iran and Israel continued after the fall of the Shah and during Khomeini’s regime–– even though  Iran publicly denied Israel’s very existence. I argue the Islamic Republic’s decision to preserve secret ties with Israel after the revolution was a move to bolster regime security and counter international security threats coming from Iraq in the lead up to, and during, the Iran-Iraq war.

 I. Introduction

Why did the Islamic Republic continue clandestine cooperation with Israel? The question is puzzling because the revolution that put the Islamic Republic in power diametrically opposed all the Shah’s policies–including the monarchy’s covert relationship with Israel. The animosity between the two countries following the revolution in 1979 has been both fervent and public, with hostilities enduring to this day. The most prominent face of the Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, stated in an interview at the beginning of his tenure that his Islamic Republic would “break off relations with Israel because [it did not] believe there is any legal justification for its existence. Palestine belongs to the Islamic space and must be returned to the Muslims.”^[1] Furthermore, the Ayatollah’s condemnation of Israel as the “Little Satan” (only second to the United States which was dubbed the “Great Satan”) followed a larger narrative which Khomeini capitalized upon during the Iran-Iraq War after assuming power. 

In early 1980, Saddam Hussein and his army invaded Iran and a bloody eight-year war ensued. The devastating war ended in a stalemate and an estimated one to two million casualties. It is important to understand that in the 1970s, prior to the Revolution, Iran had a remarkably strong military backed by the West and funded by oil wealth. Simultaneously, Iraq in the hands of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party was also rising in the ranks. This balance of power shifted once the Ayatollah came to power in 1979 and Khomeinists purged the Shah’s army out of fear and distrust. Iraq recognized this and decided to attack its historical foe less than a year after the revolution took place. In an attempt to galvanize troops, Iranian leadership during the war period promised soldiers and soon-to-be martyrs the next stop after “conquering Baghdad” would be the “liberation of Jerusalem.”^[2] Ironically, however, the peak of clandestine Iran-Israel relations was during this time period. 

Taking a closer look at the events of this period, though, it’s not as hard to believe why Khomeini decided to maintain covert ties with Israel. As Sohrab Sobhani puts it, the Shah’s departure left Khomeini to inherit the world’s sixth largest army, $26 billion in foreign reserves, an oil industry producing $105 million a day, and the Shah’s legacy of close relations with Israel.^[3]  All were gladly accepted by the new regime except for friendly relations with Israel—at least publicly. As far as the world was aware, the new Islamic Republic’s feelings about Israel were evident in its decision to redirect the Shah’s Israeli mission to the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which was actively fighting the existence of Israel. 

II. Roadmap

I begin by providing a capsulized background of Iran-Israel relations since 1948. After laying down this historical foundation, I briefly compare Iran’s foreign policy pre-revolution (1948-1978) and post-revolution (1979-present). 

Once I outline the history, I move on to reviewing the literature surrounding Iran-Israel clandestine cooperation since 1948, with a particular focus on why it continued into the years 1979-1989. I divide the literature into three separate groups: 1. International Security, 2. Domestic Pressure, and 3. Individual and Ideological Aspirations. After providing an overview of the literature at hand, I ultimately argue international security threats were the main motivator for the Islamic Republic’s policy towards Israel. The second group of literature emphasizes the importance of Iranian domestic politics and its influence on foreign ties but falls short due to its underestimation of Khomeini’s desire to uphold the Islamic regime at all costs. The final group looks at the Shah and Khomeini as individuals, assessing their leadership and analyzing their personal vision for Iran. Looking at the puzzle through an individual lens helps gain insight into how these two leaders differed from one another, but ultimately, the logic of this argument fails to explain why exactly Khomeini would sustain the policies of a man he so detested.

After reviewing the literature, I present my argument, which states the decision to continue clandestine cooperation with Israel after the revolution was a choice of pragmatism over revolutionary ideology and was induced by the Iran-Iraq War. To expand on my argument, I split up this section into two subsections. The first, “Collaborating with the ‘Little Satan’,” examines Khomeini’s tacit continuation of the Shah’s pragmatic foreign policy. The second subsection, “The Lesser of Three Evils,” focuses on how the Iran-Iraq War proliferated Iran-Israel clandestine cooperation, and why the relationship dwindled almost immediately afterward. This section also illustrates how Cold War politics played into Tehran’s decision to continue cooperation with Israel.

I then use two separate case studies of international clandestine cooperation: Israel-Saudi Arabia and Israel-Azerbaijan to help contextualize and explain why enemies collaborate in international relations. Next, I compare the two cases and illustrate their relation to Iran-Israel relations from 1948-1989. I finish this section by presenting and critiquing common arguments that muddle the puzzle at hand. The first is that the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy is guided primarily by ideology, and the second is the idea that Khomeini was merely a hypocrite. Both arguments are unsatisfying, and my goal is to unveil the complexity of the matter instead of generalizing a country’s policy based on its outward demeanor.   

I conclude the paper with a summary of key points discussed in each section and additional takeaways. I address counter-arguments, including the minimal focus placed here on the influence of the United States, the Soviet Union, and other external powers. Finally, I suggest potential areas for future research to hopefully connect the lessons learned during the initial years of the Islamic Republic and Israel’s relationship to the current one—providing a new perspective to what seems like a doomed relationship. Can Iran and Israel return to a pragmatic alliance in the future? What needs to happen for this to occur? 

II. Literature Review

Iran—up until the Islamic revolution in 1979—was a major rising power in the region. With this growth came an amassing influence that the Shah and other prominent figures in Iran had to manage effectively to avoid collapse. Interestingly, even with the Shah’s outward affinity for Western powers like the United States, the country favored secrecy when it came to Israel. Ayatollah Khomeini, the Shah’s arch nemesis, continued the late monarch’s covert cooperation with Israel even when all other policies were shunned—but why?

Intelligence expert Len Scott describes the advantage of secret alliances as the increased deniability of clandestine diplomacy, which adds to its value as a tool used by adversaries that would face criticism for engaging in a traditional alliance.^[4] Moreover, clandestine diplomacy assumes a willingness to talk with an adversary, even if these talks never amount to formal negotiations.^[5] With virtually the entire Arab world opposed to Israel’s existence, Iran seemed like one of the only plausible options Israel had for a regional companion. Iran, on the other hand, knew an overt alliance with a country they denied the existence of would tarnish its reputation among its Arab neighbors and compromise regime security. 

The existing literature can be categorized into roughly three groups of explanations for the secret relationship that emerged out of this situation. The first group focuses on the international implications of the Islamic regime publicizing their cooperation with Israel. Within this group, some view Khomeini’s vocal championing of Palestinian self-determination as a natural hindrance to any public cooperation with Israel, while others claim that the backdrop of Cold War politics was more significant. A major drawback of this group’s argument is it does not take into account the considerable differences amongst the many faces of leadership in Iran.

The second group consists of those that consider Iran’s domestic politics as the motive behind its vacillation towards Israel. This group cites prioritization of regime security as the main push factor towards covert cooperation with Israel. Domestic opposition to an exposed relationship would have been worse after 1979 than it would during the Shah’s reign since the legitimacy of the Islamic Regime rested on severing all previous ties with the West. The grounds for this argument are compelling, though its main pitfall is its lack of attention towards Khomeini’s campaign to export the Islamic revolution. 

The last group is unique in that emphasis is largely placed on individual leaders and their aspirations. In essence, this group places the Shah’s and Khomeini’s shared hegemonic ambitions at the core of Iran’s foreign policy during both of their tenures. This argument, however, fails to consider that both regimes maintained diverse leadership, making it hard to explain two phenomena with this lone wolf theory: (a) the substantial wavering of foreign policy throughout each leader’s reign and (b) the lack of amicable relations between Iran and Israel after the death of Khomeini. In post-revolutionary Iran, much of the literature emphasizes Khomeini’s ideological zeal as the main driver of his foreign policy. The logic of this assertion assumes clandestine cooperation between Iran and Israel would cease to exist without the Shah calling the shots, but this has not been the case. The reality is that Khomeini, who actively worked to reverse all that the Shah stood for, continued these covert negotiations decades after the fall of the Shah.

Group I: International Security

Scholars that emphasize the international dimension of an overt relationship between Iran and Israel make up this first group. Developments in the Middle East and broader international sphere during this time, such as the Arab-Israeli conflict and Cold War, inevitably played a role in Iranian foreign policy—but to what extent did these events affect Iran’s relations with Israel? Likewise, did these international events have any effect on the Islamic Republic’s decision to continue clandestine relations with Israel?

Iran’s Arab neighbors, especially the Gulf monarchies, were not pleased with the idea of a Shi’a-led movement preaching the trading of monarchies for Islamist governments near their borders. The influence of Khomeini’s fierce propaganda and revolutionary success was heard by Shi’a minority groups across the Middle East, which many Gulf monarchies in particular considered a looming threat to their power. Ultimately, Khomeini’s expectation that his Muslim neighbors would support him against Iraq failed to become a reality. Instead, a multilateral effort to help Saddam defeat Iran was formed; mostly because many regional powers feared the spread of an Islamic revolution in their own borders if Iran were to win the war. In fact, John Calabrese argues Khomeini’s effort to discourage collaboration with Saddam’s regime through anti-Zionist rhetoric and appeals to the Palestinian cause ended up reinforcing the Gulf states’ tilt towards Iraq.^[6] 

For the Shah, playing both sides in the Arab-Israeli conflict worked in his favor, so there was no need to publicly declare his commitment to one side over the other as long as the regional status quo remained intact. This wavering public attitude abruptly shifted under Khomeini. Instead of maintaining the Shah’s ambiguous attitude towards the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Islamic Republic firmly stood behind the Palestinians, deeming those that did not as traitors to Islam. Shahram Chubin explains this position by arguing the clergy’s pro-Palestinian posture became a source of legitimacy for the regime, as well as an area where it could stand out from its Arab counterparts.^[7] R.K. Ramazani puts forth that Khomeini’s insistence on exporting the Islamic Revolution and creating an Islamic international order led to his foreign policy doctrine of “Neither East, nor West, but the Islamic Republic.”^[8] Although through different means, the new regime shared with the monarchy before it a desire for Iran to transcend the quandaries of its neighbors and come out on top as a new model for regional hegemony. 

In his piece “Iran and the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” Ramazani argues Cold War politics are essential in understanding Iran’s secretive approach to Israel. He describes Iran’s policy under the Shah as ‘calculative ambivalence,’^[9] with most of Tehran’s behavior driven by the regime’s fundamental goal of hindering Soviet influence in the region.^[10] In his eyes, the Shah’s regime did not merely view ties with Israel as a ‘discreet entente’ against Arab hostility, but primarily as a deterrent against increasing Soviet expansion into the Middle East.^[11] In contrast, under the Islamist Regime, Israel’s ties to the United States and Western world became its main pitfall. Tehran after the Revolution had now positioned itself as both an enemy of the West and Soviet Union. Nonalignment, however, became nearly impossible for the regime to sustain after the outset of the Iran-Iraq War. John Bulloch and Harvey Morris explain that up until the revolution, America armed Iran, meaning the new regime had to find American spares for its guns, planes, armored vehicles and tanks.^[12] Bulloch and Morris point out that Israel was both the nearest supplier and the most willing.^[13] Behrouz Souresrafil expands on this by highlighting the arms embargo placed on Iran by the U.S. during the war, ultimately forcing it to choose between buying needed arms on the black market for high prices or accepting Israel’s offer at a much lower price.^[14] In the end, Iran took up Israel’s offer despite its public opposition to the state’s existence.

A considerable drawback of this group of literature is its belief that Iran’s policy towards Israel depended on Khomeini as a sole actor. Although Khomeini played a major role in crafting Iranian foreign policy during his time in charge, the lack of a functioning foreign ministry in conjunction with the loud voices of the regime’s domestic opponents were just as important when it came to ties with Israel. Additionally, this argument assumes  the regime was more outwardly than inwardly focused when it came to politics. Again,  this could have just been Khomeini’s approach at the time, and not representative of the multifaceted Iranian regime as a whole.

Group II: Domestic Pressure

The second group of literature indicates the revolutionary government decided to continue covert cooperation with Israel was because the regime needed to do so to survive. Such two-timing is consistent with revolutionary movements throughout history, and thus, the regime’s decision to maintain ties with a state that can help keep it alive is not the historical exception it is often considered to be.

Souresrafil explains the Khomeini regime faced massive problems in running the country from the start and  turned to Israel in a bid to survive.^[15] These problems only got worse after a decrease in oil prices plunged the economy into a crisis and the costs of war began suffocating the regime.^[16] By and large, Souresrafil considers Khomeini’s foreign policy to be pragmatic and, at times, opportunistic.^[17] 

After eight brutal years and millions of dollars’ worth of Israeli weapons used by the Iranian regime against Iraq, the Iran-Iraq War came to an end and Khomeini’s newfound grip on power became the regime’s largest success. Trita Parsi explains the Iran-Israel relationship has always been based on common vulnerabilities during both the time of the Shah and Khomeini. Such a relationship, however, meant if one state gained enough power to deal with threats on its own, the need for the other would cease to exist.^[18] This is precisely what happened after the new revolutionary regime emerged from the Iran-Iraq War alive.       

With most of the mayhem now behind it, the new Iranian regime could now reinforce its position as a staunchly pro-Islamic and anti-Western entity. In addition, Israel and many Iranian Jews living in the country felt the relatively fair treatment Iranian Jews experienced under the Shah was now threatened by the Islamic Republic. This drove hundreds of thousands of Iranian-Jews out of Iran after 1979 and strengthened the pro-Khomeini domestic population. Sobhani argues the new Iranian regime realized this and began using it to their advantage once Iraq invaded Iran. In support of his argument, Sobhani describes a “arms-for-Iranian Jews” agreement, which was a tacit settlement between Israel and the Islamic Republic that essentially granted Iranian Jews freedom to leave Iran in exchange for much-needed arms. During these years of Iran-Israel clandestine cooperation, it is estimated that 55,000 Iranian Jews were permitted to leave Iran.

The main weakness of this group’s argument is its lack of consideration for Khomeini’s ambitious vision to export the revolution and become the ‘voice of the oppressed’. Domestic pressure — although an essential part of the puzzle — should be considered alongside the international security concerns of the state at the time.

Group III: Individual and Ideological Aspirations

The third group places the Shah and Khomeini’s individual aspirations at the forefront of Iran’s clandestine cooperation with Israel. This is a common direction that many scholars who study Iranian foreign policy take due to the Shah’s potent nostalgia for Iran’s glorious years as a powerful empire and Khomeini’s fierce Islamist ideology. Parsi explains how the Shah’s belief in Iran’s historical predisposition to regional prominence led him to adopt a relentless approach to Iranian regional primacy, certain that Iran was the only nation capable of maintaining peace in the Middle East.^[19] This group of literature asserts it was the Shah’s quixotic desire for Iranian primacy that drove his strategic relations with Arab and Israeli neighbors. Thus, Iran’s ultimate decision to ‘play both sides’ in the Arab-Israeli conflicts by cultivating relations with both Israel and Arab neighbors was an attempt to please as many parties as possible and build legitimacy for a Shah who sought to fill what he considered a power vacuum in the region. 

Helmut Richards describes the political scene in Iran preceding and following the U.S. and British-led coup on Mohammad Mosaddeq by illustrating how the Shah altered his image after returning from exile in 1953. One of the first things the Shah said after returning to Iran was that he had “known since early childhood…that it was [his] destiny to become King.”^[20] Following this notorious claim, he reinforced this conviction by “insisting that he [had] seen Ali, Saint Abbas, and the last Imam” during his time away from his country.^[21] When analyzing Iran’s decision to pursue clandestine relations with Israel before the Islamic Revolution despite domestic and international opposition, it is helpful to view  the decision through an individual lens. In this case, through the Shah’s eyes. 

The desire for regional hegemony was another characteristic inherited by Khomeini. Though seemingly different, Khomeini’s longing to export the Revolution beyond Iran’s borders resembles the Shah’s prominent belief that Iran’s destiny was to be a regional leader. Sobhani places great emphasis on Khomeini being the main obstacle blocking the path towards an Iran-Israel alliance, arguing Iran and Israel are “natural allies” and that the removal of Khomeini would cause the two powers to revert back to a strategic anti-Arab alliance.^[22] Whether Sobhani’s assumption held up after Khomeini’s death is debatable, but what is clear is that relations between Tehran and Tel Aviv are far from as strong as they were during the Shah’s reign. Taking an individual approach can be useful in gaining a better understanding of the Shah and Khomeini’s personal perspectives on the matter, as well as understanding why they took the steps they did towards Israel during their reigns. Many consider the Shah a pragmatic and cunning political figure but view Khomeini as a zealot unable to approach politics rationally, yet Khomeini continued the Shah’s pragmatic relationship with Israel. A major drawback of this group is its reliance on the assumption that the Shah acted as a lone wolf when approaching relations with Israel. If this was the case, then one would have expected covert ties to sever with the fall of the Shah in 1979, but in fact, clandestine cooperation between Iran and Israel continued under the Shah’s archenemy: Ayatollah Khomeini. Moreover, the world’s expectation that Iran and Israel would resume good relations after the death of Khomeini in 1989 did not manifest either. The reality is that Iranian society is highly complex and will always be home to regime hardliners as well as progressive reformists, irrespective of any individual leader.

Conclusion

Scholars who prioritize the international political climate as the main driver of Tehran’s policy during this time provide an argument maintaining a great deal of merit, yet their lack of regard towards Iran’s domestic population inevitably weakens their position. The same goes for the scholars that solely focus on the Shah’s ‘megalomania’ and Khomeini’s religious zeal. In order to fill these gaps, more research needs to be done on why exactly Khomeini’s regime continued clandestine cooperation with Israel despite notorious public condemnation; as well as why cooperation dwindled after the Iran-Iraq War.

The Road Ahead

I. Argument

In this section, I argue the Islamic Republic’s strategic preservation of ties with Israel symbolizes the subduing of ideology in favor of a pragmatic foreign policy prompted by international security threats. The first part looks at the preservation of ties as a means of regime survival during an era of regional instability. A newly-formed revolutionary government that is immediately sprung into a war will naturally need to compromise to survive — even one that prides itself on non-alignment. The second part proposes that, in comparison to the U.S. and the Soviet Union, covert cooperation with Israel was a more attractive alternative for the Iranian regime.

A. Collaborating with the ‘Little Satan’

Khomeini is not a man of religion. Whoever describes him as such is fanatical, stupid and understands nothing of politics. Khomeini is a politician. When he realizes he is losing more than he is gaining, he will establish peace.

– Saddam Hussein, Baghdad, 10 November 1982

In an anarchic international system riddled with uncertainty, states inevitably must compromise to stay afloat. The Islamic Republic was not immune to this reality. What became evident soon after Iraq invaded Iran was that Khomeini’s zealous rhetoric would have to be mutually exclusive from foreign policy for the regime to survive. Stephen Walt explains that ideological differences become less of an impediment to alliance formation when more immediate issues of security arise.^[23] When the Shah was in power, common security threats from Nasser’s Egypt and the Soviet Union brought Iran and Israel closer. Under Khomeini, Iraq’s aggression combined with Iran’s isolation from the international community made room for a renewal of such cooperation largely because Iran needed weapons. Indeed, Iran’s military at the outset of the war was in a dire state and Israel was one of the few options they had for assistance. At the start of the war, it was reported there were only twenty-eight tanks in the entirety of the Khuzestan province (the closest Iranian province to Iraq). The Iranian air-force— which had been one of the strongest in the region under the Shah— was in even worse shape; with only 40 percent of the entire fleet being salvageable (60 percent of F-5s, 40 percent of F-4’s, and 10 percent of F-14’s were functionable at the time).^[24] It is also estimated that in 1979-1980, 60 percent of Iranian military personnel had quit, in addition to the thousands arrested or killed by the new regime. Israel sold more than $100 million dollars’ worth of arms to Tehran in 1983,^[25] and by 1985, Danish cargo ships chartered by the Israeli government and private arms dealers made over 600 trips carrying American-made arms through the Persian Gulf to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas.^[26]  As the war drew on, Israel made sure to keep Iranian planes flying, and Israeli instructors trained Iranian commanders on how to handle their troops.^[27]

Although the Shah was better at keeping a diplomatic front when it came to publicly discussing ties with Israel, neither him nor Khomeini could realistically cite ‘ideological alignment’ with Israel as being a factor in their cooperation. Additionally, the usefulness of Ben Gurion’s periphery doctrine —a key geostrategic doctrine involving Iran, Turkey, and Ethiopia— was also dwindling in importance during the 1980s. What remained though, was Iran’s commitment to its position as a major regional power. 

The reality is that Khomeini’s harsh rhetoric towards Israel was more of an impassioned charade than it was a foreign policy doctrine during the 1980s. In these years, Iran’s strategic and rhetorical objectives contradicted each other  and revolutionary ideology was often set aside in light of realist considerations.^[28] Essentially, while Iran publicly condemned Israel and all it stood for, it continued covert cooperation and took very little tangible action against the Jewish state. The Israelis seemed to recognize this discrepancy between rhetoric and policy early on and continued to treat Iran as a potential regional ally regardless of the regime and its classification of Israel as a “cancerous tumor.”^[29] This was largely because Shimon Peres — Israel’s prime minister and foreign minister at the time — believed that Khomeini was just a temporary ailment to Iran-Israel relations, and that the United States should actively strive to bring Iran back into the Western-camp. Surprisingly, in 1982, Israeli defense minister Ariel Sharon publicly announced on television that Israel would continue selling weapons to Iran despite American opposition. Iran denied, ridiculed, and responded to this claim by introducing resolutions to expel Israel from the United Nations.^[30] Yitzhak Rabin perpetuated this outlook, stating in 1987 that “Iran is Israel’s best friend and we do not intend to change our position in relation to Tehran, because Khomeini’s regime will not last forever.”^[31] Strangely enough, this paradox of rhetoric and policy lasted for eight years, waning with the end of the Iran-Iraq War and concurrent Cold War.

A key takeaway from Iran’s pragmatic policy was that security was ultimately more important to the regime than its hatred for the West. Throughout their respective reigns, both Saddam Hussein and Khomeini demonstrated their ability to compromise to ensure their political survival. Although not an automatic response, it was always known that both were willing to tone down their ideology if it meant they could maintain their power.^[32] This, however, changed with the end of the war in 1988. After emerging from an eight-year war alive, Iran began to back its anti-Western rhetoric with action. 

Compromise was less important to the regime after the war. Thus, even the tiny remnants of the Shah’s pragmatic relationship with Israel became severed. These years also saw a return to Khomeini’s desire to export the Revolution. This time, however, the regime’s approach was less focused on getting Arab countries on board, and more focused on targeting regional Shi’a minority populations. Lebanon and Syria became major points of interest for Iran because they were home to a large minority of Shiites, but Iran’s wandering eye was soon perceived as a direct threat to Israel’s security. The end of the Iran-Iraq War led the regime to realize it could protect itself even with all odds against it, and so compromising their ideology was no longer necessary for survival.

B. The Lesser of Three Evils

Neither east nor west, sometimes Israel, when it serves our interest best.

Sohrab Sobhani, “The Pragmatic Entente” (1989)

Khomeini’s rise to power brought with it a new populist dimension to Iranian foreign policy. This included a vehement hostility towards the United States and the Soviet Union, which the Ayatollah considered imperialists and enemies to Islam. To say the regime’s resentment was solely towards the West in the 1980s would be inaccurate, as Khomeini was insistent in his doctrine of “neither East nor West, only the Islamic Republic”. 

What is especially interesting about this period in history is that Khomeini’s regime accepted military supplies from Israel but rejected a similar proposal from the Soviet Union. Israel’s non-superpower status gave it an edge over cooperation with the United States or the Soviet Union, even if such cooperation was undisclosed to the public. In a way, it seems Khomeini ranked the United States and the Soviet Union higher than Israel in his proverbial ‘abomination’ scale. In this view, cooperation with ‘the Great Satan’ or the imperialist Soviets was a disgrace, so cooperation with ‘the Lesser Satan’ was less of a disgrace — especially in the midst of the Cold War when the Islamic regime prided itself on non-alignment. At the end of the Iran-Iraq War Khomeini gave a speech stating:

We did not collude even for a moment with America, the Soviet Union, and other global powers, and we consider collusion with superpowers and other powers as turning our back on Islamic principles.

The shift in post-revolutionary and post-war Iranian foreign policy occurred through a revived emphasis on its role as the defender of Islam, which was used to antagonize both superpowers more so than Israel. ^[34] Furthermore, Iran’s shaky history surrounding the Shah and U.S. – Russian intervention throughout the 20th century makes Israel a less threatening foe vis-à-vis the Iranian people. 

Ultimately, the Islamic Republic preserved the Shah’s clandestine policy towards Israel due to international security threats and a reluctance towards superpowers.

II. Evidence

A. Case Study #1: Israel and Saudi Arabia

The relationship between Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia varies greatly in its public image versus its private utility. The two states— historically hostile to one another— possess no official diplomatic relationship yet cooperate frequently on a covert level. Saudi Arabia is not a signatory to the commemorated Abraham Accords, even though the UAE and other Gulf neighbors are. Throughout history, what bonded this unexpected pair has been common security threats arising from regional neighbors. In the 1960s, this was the threat coming from Nasser’s Egypt. Since 1979, the two have shared an interest in curtailing Iranian expansion — specifically Tehran’s nuclear endeavors and Shi’a proxies. 

After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Khomeini and his regime began a propaganda campaign aimed at panning Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries as “un-Islamic” for evading their ‘Islamic duty’ to protect the Palestinians. What made this campaign threatening was the fact these statements were accompanied by Iranian-inspired Shi’a uprisings in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia.^[35] The latter, being an absolute monarchy with a significant Shi’a minority population in its northern region, has always been concerned about Iranian influence on its soil. Conflicts involving Iranian proxies around Israel and the Kingdom’s borders exacerbated these concerns in the past twenty-years. The steady rise of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen have been a nuisance to Israel and Saudi Arabia’s security and have thus steered the two states towards intelligence sharing and clandestine diplomacy.   In an era where America’s regional influence is dwindling, and rapprochement between the West and Iran is underway, Saudi Arabia and Israel find themselves needing to adjust to the ever-shifting times. This shift caused Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states to recognize Israel’s military capability and close relationship with the United States as a valuable connection that could help preserve a partnership with Washington.^[36] Most recently, evidence of cooperation between the two began to surface because of the Kingdom’s use of Israeli-made cyberweapons such as Pegasus, a spyware the monarchy uses to monitor dissidents abroad.^[37] For the most part, however, this cooperation has remained unofficial and out of the public eye. Some consider this to be because open relations with Israel historically carried higher costs than benefits for the Kingdom given domestic opposition and the position of other Arab countries towards the Palestinian issue.^[38] Thus, conducting clandestine diplomacy with the Jewish state is considered a win-win situation for the Saudi monarchy and its legitimacy as a conservative Islamist power. 

B. Case Study #2: Israel and Azerbaijan

The relationship between Israel and the former Soviet-state of Azerbaijan differs in some ways to the alliances mentioned above. First off, although Azerbaijan has yet to have an official embassy in Israel, cooperation between the two states is much more publicized. The capital city, Baku, is has a significant Jewish population, and the country recognized Israel’s statehood relatively early on (in comparison to Arab neighbors). These factors generated a more productive relationship, regardless of Azerbaijan’s majority-Muslim population and conflicting regional allies. 

Azerbaijan and Israel cooperate on three main fronts: interstate security concerning Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, strong trade relations, and countering Iranian influence. Like many other states that choose to maintain civil relations with Israel, Azerbaijan sees Israel’s influence in Washington as a major benefit to getting the Azeri voice heard on issues pertaining to Armenia and the ongoing conflict. The two states also face what they deem a constant existential threat, bringing them together in a coalition based on protecting their sovereignty and right to exist. From the outset of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Israel has supported the Azeri position while states like Iran and Russia supported the opposing side. Turkey, another major ally of Azerbaijan, plays an increasingly important role in Israeli-Azeri relations as the deteriorating relationship between Jerusalem and Ankara in recent years has increasingly pressured Azerbaijan to reevaluate its already-brittle ties with Israel. Such pressure provides insight on why relations between the two have not been publicized, and helps explain why Azerbaijan frequently votes against Israeli proposals in international forums.

In the economic realm, both countries have long enjoyed prosperous energy and arms trade, with the latter being the most controversial aspect of their relationship. Therefore, instances where the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resurfaces are often when Azeri-Israeli relations are highlighted and most contentious. Regardless, Baku is also one of Israel’s most reliable oil suppliers following the fallout with Egypt after the Arab Spring.^[39] Still, the Israel-Azerbaijan relationship is most effective in curtailing the shared Iranian threat.

Azerbaijan, being previously part of the Persian Empire and then briefly a Soviet entity, has had a long battle with independence. Today, the small state borders Iran to the South and Russia to the North, making its geopolitical posture highly valuable to the West and its allies. Israel, realizing this, took advantage of Baku’s strategic position vis-à-vis Iran, especially as Iranian proxies began springing up around Israel’s borders. The past ten years, for instance, have witnessed an increase in cooperation between the two states regarding intelligence gathering on the Iranian border. Furthermore, Azerbaijan is a major target for Israeli defense industry exports.^[40] Over the years, Israeli defense companies have been involved in training Azeri special forces, constructing security systems for the country’s airports, and upgrading Soviet-era military equipment.^[41] In 2011, Israel began supplying the Azeri military with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and satellite systems to monitor the border. In 2012, $1.6 billion worth of weapons had been sold to Azerbaijan by Israel Aerospace Industries.^[42] Such actions against Iran worry the regime not only because of a heightened Israeli presence on their borders, but also because Azeris make up the largest minority group inside Iran. These developments could exacerbate longstanding tensions the regime suppressed for decades. The two states are playing a remarkably risky game, but it is through these common objectives that their relationship remains sturdy in the face of regional disapproval.

C. Comparing the Two

Having examined two separate case studies illustrating unconventional covert alliances, I now compare them in relation to Iran-Israel relations from 1948-1989. 

First, I focus on the secret aspect of these relationships. The logic behind the covert nature of the Israeli-Saudi and Israel-Iran relationships both stem from the outward hostility these countries possess with one another on the world stage. Some claim this enmity is primarily due to conflicting ideologies, but I find this argument weak. It is true Israel, being a Jewish state, differs from the Islamic Republic and Saudi Arabia’s Islamic anatomy, but this is not the primary driver or repellent of relations between the states. If this were the case, then Israel’s relationship with Azerbaijan, also a Muslim state, would be just as unlikely. What is in fact similar between these cases is that they all prefer cooperation to stay out of the public eye. This might seem odd when weighing the costs and benefits of having a strong public alliance, versus a fragile secretive relationship, but in the greater context of the Middle East and its ever-shifting loyalties, a hesitancy towards commitment is less surprising. 

The modern Israel-Azerbaijan relationship is also reminiscent of the Iran-Israel relationship from 1948-1978. Both depended on containing the threat of an aggressive neighbor and both were kept secret due to domestic and international backlash. What makes the Israeli-Saudi case different is that the Kingdom largely shares with Iran a similar outward vilification of the Jewish State unlike Azerbaijan, who maintains a relatively civil exterior. As a bonus, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan both view Israel as being highly influential in Washington. In their eyes, a good relationship with Israel means more clout with the Americans— another conception shared by the late Shah.  

In the 1990s, the idea was that an Israel – Turkey – Georgia – Azerbaijan axis could constrain a developing Syria – Iran – Armenia – Russia axis.^[43] If you compare this to Ben-Gurion’s periphery doctrine in the 1950s, which envisioned an Israel – Iran – Ethiopia alliance as a counterweight to the Arab threat, a similar geopolitical strategy remains. The difference now is that the regional balance of power has shifted, and the Iranian regime is no longer threatened by its Arab neighbors in the same way it was in the latter half of the twentieth century, meaning Israel has become less useful to its interests. Using this logic, one surmises a world with a recovered and strengthened Iraq and Afghanistan would push Iran closer to Israel once again, but this is mere speculation. 

The rhetoric utilized by Khomeini and similar zealous figures in Saudi Arabia against Israel seems to have little to no effect on their actual foreign policy. Instead, radical figures utilize these tactics in an attempt to mask cooperation they themselves preach as taboo to their domestic populations. Such a strategy has less to do with ideology, and more to do with realism and regime security.

Another question one might ask: what needs to happen for a secret relationship to evolve into an open relationship? Truthfully, the answer to this question depends on several factors: individual leadership, regional security, great power competition. However, publicizing a formerly secret relationship would require, above all, the states involved to solidify their priorities. If a state with a thriving economy and strong military were to publicize a previously covert alliance with a weaker, ideologically-opposed state, there would need to be a practical reason to do so. For example, Iran-Israel cooperation up until the end of the Shah’s reign illustrated a scenario where one party wanted to publicize relations (Israel) and another felt it was unnecessary (Iran). The reason cooperation continued even after Israel’s wishes to publicize the relationship were turned down by the Shah was because Israel needed Iran more than Iran needed Israel at the time. Today, we can see a similar pattern emerging between Israel and several Arab states, making an agreement like the Abraham Accords more attractive to old enemies.  

III. Conclusion

In this paper, I attempted to answer the question of why the Islamic Republic continued clandestine cooperation with Israel. My argument attributes the prolonging of cooperation to the Islamic Republic’s implementation of realist policy to address security threats arising from Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran.

This conclusion came after exploring several competing explanations in existing literature for this covert relationship, largely split into theories around (1) international security, (2) domestic pressure, and (3) individual or ideological aspirations. Ultimately, the international security argument is the most convincing, but the literature does not consider the discrepancies in Khomeini’s rhetoric versus his ultimate policy. The second group does a good job at explaining the complex internal makeup of Iran and how such complexity can affect foreign policy decisions, but this group falls short due to an underestimation of Khomeini’s determination to uphold the regime at all costs. The final group emphasizes the role of the individual in a state’s foreign policy and compares the leadership styles of the Shah and Khomeini but fails to explain precisely why Khomeini would preserve the policies of the Shah, a figure who the Ayatollah vowed to be the foil of, as well as why an Iran-Israel entente did not resume after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989. The puzzle can best be understood through an amalgamation of certain aspects drawn from the current literature and new evidence I present further along in the paper. 

After reviewing the literature, I argue the decision to continue clandestine cooperation with Israel after the Islamic Revolution was a choice of pragmatism over revolutionary ideology induced by security threats stemming from the ongoing Iran-Iraq War. In the end, regime security was more important than Tehran’s hatred for the West. I also explored the security threat triggered by the Iran-Iraq War and explained the role Cold War politics played in the regime’s ultimate decision to extend covert collaboration. Since the Islamic Republic adhered to a “neither East nor West” doctrine during the Cold War, Israel’s non-superpower status made it a more attractive option for a state who desperately needed a security partner at a time of war.

In the following section, I compared two separate case studies of states with unorthodox secret alliances: Israel and Saudi Arabia, as well as Israel and Azerbaijan. I chose these two specific cases because certain aspects of their relationships resembled those of Iran and Israel from 1948-1989. By drawing parallels between these states and their covert cooperation with Israel, one can see how common security objectives between states often subdue ideological differences, a logic that could be easily applied to the Islamic Republic during the Khomeini years. 

While I find this theory helpful in answering the puzzle at hand, there are several shortcomings that arise from it. One limitation is a lack of attention towards the influence of the United States and Soviet Union on Iran’s decision to continue, and later eliminate, ties with Israel during these years. Furthermore, this article focused on the Iran-Israel relationship from 1948-1989 because covert data from more recent years has not yet been made publicly accessible. Once new information becomes available, there will be more room to assess the relationship in light of Iran’s recent history and the leadership of Ayatollah Khamenei. Additionally, it would be interesting to analyze the Iran-Israel relationship during Iran’s ‘reformist era’ under Rafsanjani and Khatami and compare it to the Khomeini years. 

Moving forward, I envision several different takeaways that could emerge from an understanding of this unique relationship. For one, we should learn to prioritize a state’s actions over divisive rhetoric offered at face value. This will reveal a new world of possibilities when it comes to dealing with seemingly diplomatically unreachable states. A modern-day example would be U.S.-Iran cooperation in Iraq and Afghanistan, and counterinsurgency coordination against the threat of ISIS. Low-level security cooperation between Iran and other states threatened by ISIS bolstered an interim coalition driven by common security objectives, showcasing such cooperation is achievable, even in the most unsuspecting of times.             

Some important questions that remain are: will Iran and Israel return to a pragmatic alliance in the future? And what needs to happen for this to occur? In light of this analysis, it seems possible that an Iran-Israel entente will surface once again, especially if the United States continues its withdrawal from the region. An absence of the United States from the Middle East will surely be a shock to the system, but major regional powers such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Iran have already begun taking steps towards rapprochement. The Abraham Accords and recent diplomatic engagements between the Islamic Republic and Saudi Arabia signal a new tide in Middle Eastern politics, and this newfound momentum holds the potential to bridge several deep regional chasms. Furthermore, I do not think a new Iranian regime is necessary for diplomatic progress to take place between Iran and Israel. The two states maintained a relationship for ten years under the leadership of Iran’s most radical leader to date — Ayatollah Khomeini — so arguments stating diplomatic advancement between the two countries is impossible under Iran’s current leadership seem overly simplistic. It is true both states are in different positions today than they were forty years ago, but the primary objectives of states in an anarchic world remain the same. To a large extent, I am optimistic about Israel and Iran’s potential to overcome the obstacles they face today — the uncertainty that taints the international system also assures its progression.

^[1] George E. Gruen, “The United States, Israel, and the Middle East,” The American Jewish Yearbook, no. 81 (1981): 143.

^[2] Sohrab Sobhani, The Pragmatic Entente: Israeli-Iranian Relations, 1948-1988 (New York: Praeger, 1989), 231.

^[3] Ibid, 231.

^[4] Len Scott, “Secret Intelligence, Covert Action and Clandestine Diplomacy, Intelligence and National Security,” Intelligence & National Security19, no. 2 (2004): 331.

^[5] Ibid, 337.

^[6] John Calabrese, Revolutionary Horizons: Regional Foreign Policy in Post-Khomeini Iran (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 51.

^[7] Shahram Chubin, Iran’s National Security Policy: Intentions, Capabilities, and Impact (Washington, D.C: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), 60.

^[8] R. K. Ramazani,  “Ideology and Pragmatism in Iran’s Foreign Policy,” Middle East Journal 58, no. 4 (2004): 555.

^[9] R. K. Ramazani, “Iran and the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” Middle East Journal 32, no. 4 (1978): 414-415. 

^[10] Ibid, 419.

^[11] Ibid, 416.

^[12] John Bulloch and Harvey Morris, The Gulf War: Its Origins, History, and Consequences (London: Methuen, 1989), 183.

^[13] Ibid, 183.

^[14] Behrouz Souresrafil, Khomeini and Israel, 2nd ed. (England: I Researchers Inc., 1989), 72.

^[15] Ibid, 2.

^[16] Ibid, 91.

^[17] Ibid, 113.

^[18] Trita Parsi,  Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 29.

^[19] Parsi, Treacherous Alliance, 39.

^[20] Helmut Richards,  “America’s Shah Shahanshah’s Iran,” MERIP Reports, no. 40 (1975): 7.

^[21] Ibid, 7.

^[22] Sobhani, The Pragmatic Entente, 171.

^[23] Stephen M. Walt,  The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), 183.

^[24] Souresrafil, Khomeini and Israel, 57.

^[25] Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott, and Jane Haapiseva-Hunter, The Iran-Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1987).

^[26] Seymour M. Hersch, “The Iran Pipeline: A Hidden Chapter/A Special Report.; U.S. Said to Have Allowed Israel to Sell Arms to Iran,” The New York Times, December 8, 1991.

^[27] Bulloch and Morris, The Gulf War.

^[28] Parsi, “The Iran-Israel Cold War.”

^[29] Ibid.

^[30] Ibid.

^[31] Parsi, Treacherous Alliance, 127.

^[32] Mansour Farhang, “The Iran-Iraq War: The Feud, the Tragedy, the Spoils,” World Policy Journal 2, no. 4 (1985): 672.

^[34] Mohammed E. Ahrari,  “Iran and the Superpowers in the Gulf,” SAIS Review 7, no. 1 (1987): 161.

^[35] Uzi Rabi and Chelsi Mueller, “The Gulf Arab States and Israel Since 1967: from ‘No Negotiation’ to Tacit Cooperation,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 44, no. 4 (2017): 581.

^[36] Omar Rahman, “The Emergence of GCC-Israel Relations in a Changing Middle East,” Brookings, July 28, 2021. 

^[37] Eli Lake, “The Dark Side of Israel’s Cold Peace with Saudi Arabia,” Bloomberg, https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-03/israel-s-cold-peace-with-saudi- arabia-has-a-dark-side.

^[38] Udi Dekel and Yoel Guzansky, “Israel and Saudi Arabia: Is the Enemy of My Enemy My Friend?,” The Institute for National Security Studies, 2013.

^[39] Ismayilov Elnur,  “Israel and Azerbaijan: The Evolution of a Strategic Partnership,” Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs 7, no. 1 (2013): 71.

^[40] Gallia Lindenstrauss, “Israel-Azerbaijan: Despite the Constraints, a Special Relationship,” The Institute for National Security Studies, January 2015.

^[41] Ibid, 70.

^[42] Ibid, 70.

^[43] Lindenstrauss, “Israel-Azerbaijan,” 76.

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Chubin, Shahram and Charles Tripp. Iran and Iraq at War. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988. 

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Elnur, Ismayilov. “Israel and Azerbaijan: The Evolution of a Strategic Partnership,” Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs 7, no.1 (2013): 69-76.

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Lindenstrauss, Gallia. “Israel-Azerbaijan: Despite the Constraints, a Special Relationship.” The Institute for National Security Studies, January 2015. 

Marshall, Jonathan, Peter Dale Scott, and Jane Haapiseva-Hunter. The Iran-Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1987.

Miglietta, John P. American Alliance Policy in the Middle East, 1945-1992: Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. Lanham, MD:Lexington Books, 2002.

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Firstly, a nuclear agreement with Iran deteriorates strong American alliances in the Middle East, impeding American economic and political interests. Specifically, relations with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies such as the United Arab Emirates are already declining as a result of the Biden administration’s intentions to craft a deal with Iran. Following the crisis in Ukraine, Saudi and Emirati leaders refused to speak to President Biden about using their vast petroleum resources to ease rising oil prices.[4] The rebuke is damaging for the American economy given the astronomical rise of $100 per barrel in crude oil prices after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[5] Deteriorating U.S. relations with the Gulf states is an implicit result of the Biden administration’s adoption of a foreign policy strategy in the region that undermines the objectives of the Gulf monarchies, namely their desire to limit Iranian aggression and military capabilities. Saudi Arabia and the UAE perceive a potential Iran Deal as strengthening and emboldening their Shia rival to create instability in the region and undermine their influence and authority. For instance, Iranian support for the Houthi rebel group has been designed to challenge Saudi authority and instigate conflict. American alliances with Saudi Arabia and the UAE yield integral economic and political benefits by providing American consumers with cheaper oil and securing American national security objectives by ensuring stability in the region. However, if the Biden administration follows through on a nuclear agreement with Iran, America risks losing these benefits, which could prove costly during a potential confrontation with the rising hegemonic powers such as Russia and China. 

The renewed Iran nuclear talks also harm America’s relationship with one of their strongest allies in the region, Israel. The Prime Minister of Israel, Naftali Bennet, has expressed his disdain for a nuclear deal, characterizing a potential arrangement between the United States and Iran as violent and volatile.[6] Israel’s opposition stems from a fear of Iranian military aggression against them and Iranian state funding for terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah.[7] Given these serious threats to Israeli national security, American support for a nuclear arrangement with the Iranian regime would result in less favorable American relations with Israel. Israel provides America with numerous benefits, such as intelligence and military technology, and possesses one of the strongest trade partnerships with the United States. Uniquely in the region, Israel also shares similar democratic and political norms as the United States.[8]

Recently, relations between Israel and Gulf monarchies have improved significantly, as they have coalesced against a common enemy: Iran. For instance, they signed the 2020 Abraham Accords, an unprecedented treaty strengthening peace and cooperation between Israel and other prominent Arab nations such as Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco, and Sudan.[9] Moreover, as a follow-up to the Accords, Israel hosted a summit with four Arab nations to discuss and strategize how to effectively coordinate against Iran.[10] The coordination of American allies in the Middle East against Iran should signal to America the urgency of containing Iran and mitigating their pernicious effects in the region.

The renewal of the Iran Deal weakens important American alliances with Saudi Arabia and Israel indicating a drastic potential loss of American influence and power in the Middle East. By undercutting our strongest allies in the region, the United States weakens its authority. American allies will start to question the value and benefits they provide and start slowly distancing themselves from America in favor of hegemonic powers such as China and Russia that better support their interests. America needs to understand that alliances are mutual partnerships: in order to reap the benefits of our alliances, we need to support the national security interests of our allies. 

References

[1] Laurence Norman and Sune Engel Rasmussen, “What Is the Iran Nuclear Deal? What It Means, from Nuclear Weapons to the Price of Oil,” The Wall Street Journal (Dow Jones & Company, March 16, 2022), https://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-nuclear-deal-explained-11610564572.

[2] Ibid

[3] The Editorial Board, “Rushing to a Weaker Iran Deal,” The Wall Street Journal (Dow Jones & Company, February 6, 2022), https://www.wsj.com/articles/rushing-to-a-weaker-iran-deal-nuclear-inspectors-concessions-sanctions-oil-exports-missiles-11644170016.

[4]Dion Nissenbaum, Stephen Kaulin, and David S. Cloud, “Saudi, Emirati Leaders Decline Calls with Biden during Ukraine Crisis,” The Wall Street Journal (Dow Jones & Company, March 9, 2022), https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-emirati-leaders-decline-calls-with-biden-during-ukraine-crisis-11646779430.

[5] Kevin Hack and Jimmy Troderman, “Crude Oil Prices Rise above $100 per Barrel after Russia’s Further Invasion into Ukraine,” Crude oil prices rise above $100 per barrel after Russia’s further invasion into Ukraine – Today in Energy – U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), March 4, 2022, https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=51498.

[6] Josef Federman, “Explainer: Impending Iran Nuclear Deal Alarms Israel,” AP NEWS (Associated Press, February 23, 2022), https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-middle-east-iran-israel-europe-f30eca2ae3a7338f8811a49a039c6829.

[7] Ibid.

[8] ​​“U.S. Relations with Israel – United States Department of State,” U.S. Department of State (U.S. Department of State, January 20, 2021), https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-israel/.

[9] “The Abraham Accords,” U.S. Department of State (U.S. Department of State, January 13, 2021), https://www.state.gov/the-abraham-accords/.

[10] Patrick Kingsley, “Israel, U.S. and 4 Arab Nations Focus on Security at Summit,” The New York Times (The New York Times, March 28, 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/28/world/israel-arab-nations-meeting?auth=login-google.

As photographer Laurence Rasti depicts above, queer life in Iran is fraught with tension. Exemplified by the two figures holding hands, it is a life of beauty, joy, and connection. But the floral-covered faces illustrate the concomitant danger, invisibility, and fear. Theoretical analyses of these tensions have created new possibilities for gender subjects,^[1]arguing that the queer subaltern scene in Iran vastly exceeds the analytical capacity of the Western theoretical imagination.^[2] What these approaches have not attempted to do, however, is explore how the oppression of queer people constitutes a means, and not just an effect, of authoritarian governmentality. In this paper, I will argue that the application of queer biopolitics can act as a theoretical entryway into how the Islamic Republic of Iran’s (IRI) authoritarianism utilizes queer suffering and oppression as a cruel end in-of-itself and as a vehicle towards other oppressions levied upon its non-queer citizenry. First, I will use queer biopolitics to analyze the Islamic Republic’s repression of non-normative genders and sexualities. Next, I will examine particular sites of queer biopolitical control, dominance, and death in Iran. This paper will conclude with a brief analysis of Iran’s techniques of digital repression, HIV/AIDS, and drug addiction as case studies of queer biopolitics. Throughout, I strive to navigate the tension between robust theoretical analysis and the symbolic hegemony of the West within queer theory itself. 

What are queer biopolitics, and why does this mode of thought have a privileged perspective in analyzing Iranian authoritarianism? To begin with Michel Foucault’s traditional framework, biopolitics refers to the study of power over life itself. Previous examinations of biopolitics’ relationship to Iran have scrutinized Foucault’s own vested interest in the Islamic Revolution. Michiel Leezenberg, a scholar of Foucault, writes that

“[Foucault] was focused on the protests against a particular mode of government, rather than in the subsequent power struggle in the creation of a new political order. Foucault was both intrigued and horrified by the spectacle of an unarmed population defying, and eventually overthrowing, one of the strongest and most repressive states in the world, having not only a formidable army, police force, and intelligence service of its own, but also the backing of the United States. He found the clarity and simplicity of the calls for Islamic government “familiar, but hardly reassuring,” qualifying the voices of the mullahs calling for the Shah’s departure as “terrible,” etc.” ^[3]

Indeed, Foucault himself writes that “[the Islamic Revolution] embodies a revolt against politics rather than a concrete political program: it is the ‘most modern, and the maddest, revolt,’ against both liberalism and socialism.”^[4] Foucault’s timely analysis of the Revolution situated his biopolitical framework as an alternative explanatory mechanism for what many considered to be an inexplicable event. That is, he posited his soon-to-come theory of governmentality in a postmodern polity as the driving force for the revolution rather than the prevailing Marxist conception of class warfare or today’s Western neoliberal conception of religious extremism. In an open letter he wrote to Mehdi Bazargan, Foucault even asked, “In the expression ‘Islamic government,’ why cast suspicion immediately on the adjective ‘Islamic’? The word ‘government’ by itself is enough to awaken one’s vigilance.”^[5] At these moments, Foucault seemed to embrace a post-structuralist analysis of power and resistance in Iran. Of course, many scholars have since critiqued Foucault for his over-emphasis on the supposed ubiquity and timelessness of Shi’ite Islam, and his orientalist leanings.^[6]

Though traditional Foucauldian biopolitics may have already fulfilled their maximal potential, his framework presents a tantalizing opportunity to deploy queer theory alongside a biopolitical analytic.^[7] Queer theory, which has consistently characterized itself as and performed the role of de-naturalizing and de-essentializing that which is assumed universal, has the potential for fulfilling Leezenberg’s call for a “bottom-up”^[8] analysis of Iranian power and governmentality. As Lotta Kähkönen and Tiia Sudenkaarne write, “Queer biopolitical theories have interrogated the symbiotic relation of life and death by analyzing tensions between biopolitics and necropolitics—of death and different types of political violence.”^[9] As such, queer biopolitics uniquely engages with the dense theoretical field of how states manage normativity and populations through a cross-sectional approach that draws upon both the cultural and body studies produced by queer theory, as well as the seminal “right over life and power over death” found in traditional Foucauldian biopolitics. Queer biopolitics also presents a bridge between analyses of authoritarian governmentality and the subjugation of queer people and populations—a crucial linkage for understanding how the Islamic Republic operationalizes its authoritarian schema. Most importantly, queer biopolitics systematically privileges the lived experiences of subjects under sovereignty rather than attempting to characterize populations and their states through universalized terms. The legacy of Iran’s relationship to queerness and non-normative bodies is long, spectacularly complex, and perhaps indecipherable to an outside theorist. Even capturing contemporary queer histories of post-revolutionary Iran is a task too large for anything less than several volumes. Rather, queer biopolitics is a project of ongoing interrogation which aims to leverage insights from queer theory to begin upending previously invisible structures, modalities, and paradigms of oppression. 

Queer theorists of Iran have already described how deviant genders and sexualities have been managed by the Iranian state. This previous work has overwhelmingly focused on the Iranian male homosexual. As Donna Azoulay writes, in Iranian cultural history scholars identify a “third gender, the ‘passive male homosexual.’ This distinction in passivity can be seen in the historical labeling of the ‘ma’bun’ […].”^[10] The ma’bun, described by Janet Afary as “somewhere in the middle”^[11] between dominant patricentric men and subordinate women, was a symbolic figure which emerged early in medieval Iranian society, signified by the performance of patriarchal family-rearing alongside the adoption of feminine aesthetics, non-normative sexual significations, and discreet engagement with “passive” sexual roles in male-to-male relationships.^[12] Azoulay and Afary both note that in this schema of politicized desire, it was not the sexual act that was considered abhorrent, but instead the desiring of another man. Azoulay capitalizes on this finding to argue that, today, the IRI strategically “filters” between ‘trans-sexuals’^[13] and homosexuals. For the IRI, gender dysphoria is a condition that can be pathologized by state biopower as a curable syndrome. However, the homosexual male performs a symbolic transgression of normative gender strata; his desiring of other men violates biopolitical demands on gender-as-performance rather than simply gender as cis-identification. As Raha Bahreini argues, these normative demands arise from the precedence of gender roles and performance above “purely” cisgender identity.^[14] In other words, the IRI’s “tragic commitment”^[15] to gender is a commitment to masculinity more thanmaleness.

As the authoritarian state exerts biopolitical control over the performance and construction of sex/gender systems, it deploys biomedicine and healthcare as its tools of choice.  Medical conceptions of “health” exclude various forms of embodied possibilities from social positions of acceptance, visibility, and legibility. The body emerges from birth and is thrown against a wall of expectation—of internal and external genitalia, normal chromosomal adherence, bones and muscles that portend futures of capitalist productivity. Examination of queer bodies holds particular significance, for, as Judith Butler describes, the queer body automatically commits several acts of treason against these systems of oppression.^[16] Its sexual attraction refuses heteronormative sense-making, in return upending oppositional relations of gender binaries; its existence generates fields and potentialities of antisocial performance; and its gender performances are iteratively resistant to compulsory norms. Luce Irigary summarizes this eloquently by stating that queer sexual acts upend oppositional relations in which the man is and the woman is not^[17]—they transgress the sexed gender possibilities of performance and subjectivation. In this sense, what is at stake for queer biopolitics is the regulation of all citizens’ gender performances. For authoritarianism, queerness makes no sense whatsoever because it disassembles grounding norms of how bodies are made culturally and socially intelligible to a coercive regime. Let us understand this at its absolute maximum: the queer body’s non-normative acts are politically treasonous specifically because they upend authoritarian biopolitical normativity that becomes “real” through medical discourse.

A great deal of international activism and queer transnationalism has also focused on the circumstances surrounding trans* people in Iran. In these predictable media tropes, the gender affirmation/reassignment surgery is a procedure forced upon homosexuals and other queer people, which if undertaken, guarantees political rights. Bahreini concludes that, in Iran, 

“the transperson “chooses” to conform, psychologically, hormonally and even surgically, to the prevailing dichotomous sex/gender scheme because that allows him/her to escape his/her stigmatized status and achieve “normalcy.”^[18]

Bahreini’s overview of trans* peoples’ situations in Iran concentrates on how state-biopolitical demands of gender conformity frame the issue through medicalization, and thus as conditions of “health” to be expediently addressed within medical teleology, generally argue that the discourse and practice of state-sanctioned gender-related surgery is a means of legitimizing oppressive, hateful, and carceral paradigms towards trans* and gender non-conforming people rather than subsidizing or sanctioning them. In this frontispiece, state surgery is brought into sharp relief as a classic instance of how Foucauldian biopolitics condemn medical authority as a self-naturalizing lever of asymmetric relationships of power between state/ruler and citizen/subject. However, Zara Saeidzadeh argues that this is not the full picture. Spanning a huge range of primary interviews with LGBTQ+ Iranians and gender-surgery medical providers, Saeidzadeh explores how intercity differences illustrate how these media tropes gloss over the complexities and disputes surrounding gender affirmation/reassignment surgery,^[19] and even disproving the idyllic narrative of the IRI universally sponsoring gender-related surgery. For instance, in the city of Kermanshah, this process must be initiated by the public and revolutionary court (dadsaray-e-omumi va enghlab), whereas in Shiraz and Mashdad, it begins at the family court with psychiatric evaluation. Indeed, Saeidzadeh controversially argues that “sex-change surgery is not legislated by [the Iranian] state, nor it is deemed obligatory under Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa.”^[20]

At the same time, state-sanctioned procedures are separate from individually held beliefs about gender affirmation and transition (though they, of course, influence each other). Individuals face transphobia from communities and other non-state actors, no matter their gender transition experience. In a truly Foucauldian fashion, power over compulsory normativity is dispersed amongst the population and state—between the subjugated and the dominant, and within the modalities of class, race, and urban-rural citizenship. This is how Saeidzadeh points the way to the radical possibilities for developing resistance within these structures of queer oppression. As she writes, “those who undergo sex-change surgery are not passive victims of patriarchy being forced to normalize their bodies within a heterosexual matrix; rather, they reconstruct their own subjectivity through the process of transsexual embodiment.”^[21] In this sense, opting for surgical procedures constitutes an act of self-recognition that emerges into a scene of sociopolitical visibility: a uniquely queer mode of interacting with dispersed power relationships. Further, the subject-as-subjected comes into question; Saiedzadeh’s analysis, like Bahreini’s, seems to argue that trans* people are non-autonomous subjects or victims to the authoritarian state bulldozes over the various ways in which gender transgression can exceed the bounds of authoritarianism. What the authors do not consider is that an Iranian queer citizen’s engagement in gender-related surgery, and thus with the authoritarian regime, can become an utterly unique form of symbolic queer life, death, and rebirth in its agentic self-direction. It bursts open conventional notions of either the queer as universally radical, or even Jasbir Puar’s concept of the “homonational” as a fixture of repressive Western governance.^[22] Instead, the queer Iranian is engaging in praxis which moves beyond this binary dialectic, illustrating a form of political survival which has yet to be described.

We have examined an extremely wide range of scholarship on gender and sexuality, as well as the state policing of both. What do we make of these scattered, disparate issues of resistance to power and authoritarian governmentality? As Maurice Godelier so acutely summarizes, “society haunts the body’s sexuality.”^[23] That is, compulsory sexual normativity places ongoing demand onto queer peoples’ bodies and desires, politicizing biology. Monique Wittig asserts that “the category of ‘sex’ is itself a gendered category, fully politically invested, naturalized but not natural.”^[24] The queer and gender atypical body in Iran experiences this post-structural praxis of domination through the application of biopolitical management. Perhaps the most appropriate theorist is the psychoanalyst Thomas Laqueur, who writes that 

“almost everything one wants to say about sex – however sex is understood – already has in it a claim about gender. Sex, in both the one-sex and the two-sex worlds, is situational; it is explicable only within the context of battles over gender.”^[25]

Through this non-dimorphic classification of gender and sexuality, queer theory elucidates how and why the IRI’s demands for bodily normativity and policing of desire is so reluctant to accept the homosexual man while simultaneously presenting gender affirmation/reassignment surgery as a “cure” for the “maligned” trans* person. Performance of sexual desire either constitutes or transgresses gender idealizations, making one’s gender identity legible in social reality. Simultaneously, gender informs what archetypes of sexual action and desire are considered “healthy” and sanctionable. In a world of social embodiment, this means that the boundaries between gender and sexual embodiment are far less clear. Each act of desire and gender configuration is constituted of the other, such that the selfhood of either is inherently denied. For my analysis, this means that the conditions of Iranian trans* and gay people are inextricable from each other another, and are mutually embossed in a system of domination and in the potential for liberation. 

 The tension between Saiedzadeh and Bahreini is a fruitful locus for grappling with this vis-a-vis queer biopolitics. The two depictions of the surgical choice at-large are somewhat incompatible. On one hand, the IRI demands gender-reassignment surgery as part of a logic of domination which consumes the wider field of possibility of gender and sexual forms, but on the other hand, the surgical option is considered as of self-actualizing trans* subjectivity in spite of totalizing sociopolitical oppression and phobia. I venture that these perspectives are actually non-mutually exclusive when understood from the vantage of queer biopolitics. As Foucault writes, “at the junction of the ‘body’ and the ‘population,’ sex became a crucial target of a power organized around the management of life rather than the menace of death.”^[26] A biopolitically authoritarian state thus manages their populace as both individual bodies and as members of a unique population—as self-possessed agents of transgression and as non-specific “faceless” phenomena. Of course, the non-voluntary election of surgery is a conscription into gender normativity placed onto trans* populations: a bio-policy levied in order to manage the deviant lives of an entire populace through orchestrating the symbolic death of their own discursive gender identities. But the individual body can “reconstruct [its] own subjectivity”^[27] within this matrix of power through divesting from what Neel Ahuja calls the “spectacular temporalities of crisis and transcendence,”^[28] which is a regressive framing of queer life as a process of rebirth (biopolitics) and death (necropolitics) into a more true, essential, or perfect queer form. Rather, as Ahuja and Saiedzadeh argue, gender configurations are specific to both time and space, and in turn actively bring social reality into spatiotemporal existence. There is no quintessential or a priori queer or trans* person—instead, each body is postured and articulated in a fluid, post-modern environment. This process, which Connell calls social embodiment,^[29]moves beyond theoretical arguments about queer survival under oppression, which tend to valorize micro-political acts at the cost of reckoning with ongoing sociopolitical domination. Rather, social embodiment explains how, within queer biopolitics, a body and a subject can be locked into an asymmetric relationship of domination at the same time as engaging in self-fashioning and reconfiguration. This self-fashioning does not necessarily constitute meaningful acts of political resistance. Instead, theorizing social embodiment constitutes a post-structural acknowledgement of the queer subject under biopower. The queer subject, among other things, is constituted by both a particularly situated body and membership to a deviant population. These two separate forces operate at tension, and it is precisely this tension which generates a heretofore unconsidered mode of life under authoritarian control.

Katarzyn Korycki and Nasirzadeh Abouzar draw upon historical analysis to analyze how the othering of male homosexuals and official recognition of trans* people are in parity.^[30] Their analysis also reveals how Western conceptualizations of queerness provide “ready-made positive markers of identity”^[31] to be re-inscribed onto non-normative Iranian desires and bodies. But these Western concepts do little to counter the unique sociopolitical and historical formation of the gay/trans* parity while also playing into a neocolonial fetish for “liberating” queer subaltern subjects through paradoxically reproducing colonial paradigms of “civilized” status. In place of this, Korycki evaluates how “new Persian words” have been created by queer Iranian activists, such as hamjins-gara’i (same-sex love, same-sex desire, same-sex orientation), as symbolic moves away from the dichotomy of authoritarianism and neocolonialism.^[32] These new terms and concepts are not merely descriptive, but also are radically prescriptive in their inception. They signal a novel form of critique that rests in the actually socially embodied lives of queer Iranians. F. Rouhani writes that this profoundly Iranian queer lexicon “is being mobilized by gay and lesbian activists and subjects inside Iran to disrupt the grid of intelligibility for constituting and othering sexual minorities as non-authentic Iranians.”^[33]In the matrix of biopower and control, the subjective power of reclaiming a name stands concomitant with an embodied resistance to state control over life and death. As evidenced by this generation of new terms of positive ubiquity, the Iranian iteration of this is rooted in alliance-building as a means of upending repression-by-parity.

The temporal differences of Bahreini and Saiedzadeh must also be examined. Bahreini writes during the midst of the Ahmadinejad presidency in 2008. Bahreini’s writing also takes place proximal to the highly publicized 2005 hanging of two boys in Mashhad for reported “homosexual activities.”^[34] Ahmadinejad’s presidency was marked by a revival of particularly repressive policies on LGBT people, with some data suggesting that 2007 was the highest rate of gender-related surgery in Iran.^[35] And, of course, Ahmadinejad’s notorious claim that “there are no homosexuals in Iran”^[36] characterizes his paradigm of queer annihilation. But Saiedzadeh is writing deep into the Rouhani presidency and within the midst of the 2019-2020 Iranian protests calling for the overthrow of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Rouhani has advanced some hesitant attempts at defending queer Iranians. However, F. Rouhani writes that though “[President] Rouhani has tried to ‘reign in’ the morality police by bringing its operations under the jurisdiction of his own interior ministry, this move has been defeated by powerful conservative forces in the establishment.”^[37] Farhang Rouhani then returns to the Khatami presidency in the late 1990s, when internationalization of human rights discourse had a profound impact on President Khatami’s reactivity to queer citizens and subjects, though hardline conservatives largely blocked his interventions.^[38] In short, the symbolic and ideological fluctuations of presidencies in the IRI present a critical source of critique against queer biopolitics themselves. They not only illustrate the heterogeneity of the IRI, but also reframe accounts of queer biopolitics away from the invocation of a liberal secular imaginary. As we move deeper into this paper’s critique, a new problem is emerging about the stability of our conceptualization of biopower and biopolitics itself. Indeed, state biopolitics of queer desire, death, and survival in postrevolutionary Iran seem to have constantly shifting antecedents and conditions of emergence. 

 And yet the question remains: what is the utility of suppressing deviant gender and sexuality to such an extent for the IRI’s authoritarian governmentality? To tackle this crucial issue, we must turn to Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben. His analysis of “bare life,” or the reduction and exclusion of certain people outside of judiciary, legal, and political legibility, explains what authoritarian governmentality has to gain from marginalizing queerness. The subject of bare life, which he names homo sacer from the archaic Roman tradition, “is one who has been excluded from normal human law and as such is placed in a ‘limit condition’ between this world and the next, between properly-qualified human life and death.”^[39] To Agamben, the limit condition is a hallmark of modern sovereignty: “The sovereign sphere is the sphere in which it is permitted to kill without committing homicide and without celebrating a sacrifice, and sacred life—that is, life that may be killed but not sacrificed—is the life that has been captured in this sphere.”^[40]Rendering life bare via exclusion could be described as a tension-holding process in which social marginalization does not necessarily manifest as mass imprisonment or elimination (as Foucault would put it, “making death”) but where the imagined demarcation of liberties and rights itself is evidence of the inescapable sway of modern sovereign power. And the queer body serves as territory for the sovereign to claim. Through the inescapable links of embodied autonomy, we have already discussed, this act has ramifications for the whole population.

Further, the limit condition, which Agamben describes as the “hidden paradigm of the political space of modernity,”^[41] unmasks a potential mechanism behind the Islamic Republic’s sponsorship of gender-related surgery. The process of social embodiment for queer people in Iran, which is already outside of social and cultural legibility, is made bare by the authoritarian regime. The sovereign dialectic creates a condition of inescapability precisely through using the coerced surgical option to make the pre-surgical body sociopolitically illegible. At the level of the population, the dialectic produces a gendered and sexed state of exception, in which the ideal cisheteronormative social body is continually presented as under assault. Through perpetuating a state of bodily precarity, the need for extraordinary measures becomes politically possible and tolerable. Thus, surgical sponsorship not only pathologized deviant genders and sexualities, but rendered those bodies as bare. But at the same time as the surgical “option” operationalizes the limit condition for queer Iranians, Saiedzadeh’s account of the many trans* Iranians who used the “option” to find great personal fulfillment complicates this argument’s narrative. Queer Iranian life beyond discourse around surgery also presents a challenge to an asymmetric view of biopolitical power.

 The analysis so far has been largely theoretical, and to draw this into the material, let us now turn to the IRI’s burgeoning digital surveillance and repression as a case study of queer biopolitics. After online and digital mediums of organizing resistance played a key role in the 2009 protest movements, the IRI began a campaign of repression enhancement. Since then, digital repression has evolved in tandem with techniques of resistance, including deep packet inspection, targeted individual monitoring, and challenging hacking techniques. Marcus Michaelsen writes that,

“While their actual technical capabilities remain obscure, security agencies rely on the chilling effect of mediatized surveillance operations. Now and then, state television airs forced confessions of arrested social media users to highlight the regime’s skills in cyber-policing. In addition to internet activists and journalists, these campaigns also target other online communities who are considered to transgress official norms.”^[42]

Alongside its campaign of mass censorship and internet restriction, the IRI has also created a national “intranet” to prevent external access and influence. By 2013, the regime had designed its own alternatives to Gmail, YouTube, and Yahoo. Access to this intranet requires Iranian citizens to use national ID numbers and other centrally located identifying information. As Ilan Berman writes, 

“Iran’s campaign of digital repression is part of a larger regime effort to prevent the intrusion of Western values and cultural influence into the country. Iranian authorities see such penetration – which they view as a “soft war”being waged against them by the West – as an existential threat to their rule. In 2009, Khamenei identified this fight as the government’s “main priority.”^[43]

It is through these complex forms of online repression and surveillance that the regime is able to modulate civil society with unprecedented access. State ownership of telecommunications firms enables constant citizen tracking, which is of particular interest to the regime during times of protest and unrest. Communications with members of the Iranian diaspora or other non-citizen rabble-rousers is regularly monitored. Crucially, Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Erica Frantz write that the Chinese Communist Party has been sharing digital repression techniques, infrastructure, and software with the Iranian government at an all-time high.^[44] A hallmark of the Chinese method of repression is the centralization of citizen data (demographics, face, voice, digital profile, social media, etc.) under a single alphanumeric sign.^[45] In Iran’s case, this is becoming the national ID number, under which an amassed group of correlated surveillance data is beginning to be merged.^[46]

 These burgeoning techniques of digital repression disproportionately affect queer communities. As David Faris and Babak Rahimi write, “the Internet has been an invaluable tool in facilitating gay Iranians to get connected.”^[47]Not only are the internet and social media spaces for finding community, partnership, intimacy, and sex, but they also act as sources of subversive information for queer Iranians on topics like conscription, HIV/AIDS, and immigration.^[48] Queer activist networks share information and mobilize communities through publishing e-zines like Neda, which are distributed through private channels. These communication channels harbor incredible strands and pushes towards resistance. As one Neda article asks, “Will there be a day that Iranian queer people be fully accepted in the Iranian culture? Is Molana not enough reason for them?”^[49] It is on these digital platforms that even more radical terms like degarbashan jensi (queer) have emerged, coalescing a colloquial language of underground activism. Most notably, some queer Iranians use the internet as a means to virtually “come out”—a flagrant rejection of Ahmadinejad’s denial of queer Iranian people and a bold activist tactic. Wayne Martino and Jón Kjaran describes these digital spaces as “virtual heterotopias”^[50] that complement physical spaces of queer gathering to create private spaces of queer comfort and intelligibility which are constantly unfolding and unstable. As the authors continue, 

“It is in this sense that such heterotopic spaces for gathering need to be understood in their temporality as the fleeting materialization of disorienting forms of queer social investment taking shape and set against the limits of a bodily horizon^[51] of state enforced compulsory heterosexuality.”^[52]

As such, the virtual and the physical spaces combine times and spaces for the queer body to leave the scene of state-mediated, biopolitical oppression. Not only does this create conditions of safety, but also enables the act of imagining future resistance. What it conversely reveals is the socially-mediated nature of queer oppression as a non-essential feature of Iran —that it is possible to undo what has been done.

Yet upon extending these findings, we discover both the disproportionate harm which censorship and repression have on queer communities, as well as the precariousness faced inherently by queer Iranians who expose themselves on online forums. According to Human Rights Watch, Iranian surveillance operatives are known to impersonate queer people within online forums to gather information, hack profiles, and leverage network information into tangible threats.^[53] And this comes as no surprise. As Kathryn Conrad argues, hypermodern surveillance techniques in the ‘information age’ have created new ontologies of embodiment.^[54] Drawing on Irma van der Ploeg’s work on the virtual ‘body-as-information,’^[55] she continues that inherent to mass surveillance is an “innately conservative epistemology” which aims to put disproportionate and overwhelming “normative pressure on non-normative bodies and practices.”^[56] The Iranian regime has institutionalized this normative pressure through mass surveillance which forms a new mode of citizen control through creating new virtual ontologies, or bodies-as-information. And this is not the first time that new ontologies of embodiment have emerged. Donna Haraway’s analysis of biology describes a new meaning-production system of “recognition and misrecognition, […] the body’s reading practices, and billion-dollar projects to sequence the human genome [in a] genetic ‘library’.” She further argues that the biomedical-biotechnical body is “a semiotic system, a complex meaning production field.”^[57] Combined with centralized DNA, facial, and voice profiling databases, the national ID code can become the alphanumeric sign under which citizens’ behaviors and acts reside, replacing their biological and social bodies in both significance and utility (just as exhibited in China). Indeed, the stored information which constitutes this sign is inseparable from what the state does to a citizen’s physical body and even more important than what their body is “actually doing.” The CCTV camera and its underlying algorithms reign supreme. I propose the concept of the virtual-biopolitical body as a novel semiotic locus, a site in which a citizen’s embodiment is reconfigured into a yet-undescribed mode which is owned and controlled by the authoritarian state’s databases. 

I note that this virtual embodiment and its machinations are distinctly not the same liberatory mode as, say, Haraway’s Cyborg. Instead, the Iranian virtual body is a disturbing amalgam of panoptic fear and State desire, the manifestation of Khameinei’s internalized and corrosive gaze. Unlike virtual bodies of individual production, virtual bodies of authoritarian state production enable enhancement of state surveillance on a logarithmic scale and alter the culture of authoritarianism itself. Not only does Iranian surveillance and its accompanying databases eliminate any spatiotemporal limitations to surveillance, but Michalis Lianos and Mary Douglas also explain that the incorporation of predictive algorithms into CCTV networks alters the logic of negotiation which underpinned ‘old’ surveillance. They write that “[predictive algorithms] radically transform the cultural register of the societies in which they operate by introducing non-negotiable contexts of interaction.”^[58] The algorithm is ironclad in the sense that it suffers from none of the folly of human emotion and pliability due to its profound reductivism, using no other logic than what is programmed. At this point, the authoritarian state no longer has no reason to engage in dialectical production and destruction of values with its citizenry. As Lianos and Douglas continue, in an algorithmic society 

“there are no good and bad, honest and dishonest – or for that matter, poor or less poor – individuals. There are simply holders or nonholders of valid tokens for each predetermined level of access.”^[59]

In Iran’s case this totalizing binary of permission or exclusion (desirable or undesirable) makes civil discourse and individual identity production entirely irrelevant for the sovereign power.

The problem of organizing resistance must also be considered. How can you outrun the queer basher when he lives in every camera, of which there are countless on every street and corner? In a world where machine learning has mastered the facial recognition of sexual orientation,^[60] deviant bodies and sexualities can be tracked and profiled alongside their social credit and punished as such. It becomes terrifying to imagine an Iran without any underground spaces of liberated desire, sexual and gender expression, and without a visible queer population altogether. Forget planning protests, sex work, public sex or cruising; entering a home with a member of the same sex with a suspicious look on your face has become criminal activity—and even this may disappear because criminality need not exist amongst virtual bodies. Just as files are wiped, undesirable virtual bodies can be deleted through physical disappearance. It is the first totalizing time where the matter of surveillance and punishment is not one of if (probability and risk) but when and where (a given outcome). For Khameinei, he may not even need to continue disappearing queer people and activists as the internalization of his omnipresent gaze is sufficient to eliminate, through sheer and unabated terror, queer resistance and organizing altogether. Thus emerges an Iranian state panopticism, which heralds a new age of queer biopolitical control. 

HIV/AIDS survival is a sphere in which biopower manifests most obviously, particularly in Iran’s case. The prevalence and novel infection rate of HIV/AIDS, which is falling dramatically around the world due to breakthroughs in treatment and prevention techniques, has continued rising in Iran.^[61] Though most countries report that their new cases are primarily due to unprotected sexual activity, it is estimated that the majority of Iran’s 20,000 HIV-positive people were infected by sharing contaminated needles. Comprehensive reviews of Iran’s triangular clinics (which treat HIV infection, drug addiction, and mental health) have found that extreme social stigma presents a nearly insurmountable barrier to treatment and prevention for many Iranians living with HIV.^[62] In particular, Mohammad Karamouzian concludes that a lack of effective medical education to doctors and other healthcare providers on HIV leads to provision of suboptimal care.^[63] Further, the extreme ostracization—such as family rejection, loss of employment, and violence—experienced by those whose HIV status was made public leads patients to refuse treatment and deny their medical situation. Amongst countless other cultural and social modes of stigma and rejection, the situation for HIV-positive Iranians is clearly dire. They face a dearth of medical treatment and an excess of shame and stigma. 

A conventional approach might be to argue that these forms of marginalization are rooted in elements of deeply-held Iranian culture, and consequently are just as ineffable as they are quintessential. But this is a dangerous precedent to set; it not only reinforces racist, colonial notions of Iran as needing Western “enlightenment”; but it also under-articulates the crucial mechanisms of biopolitics. Kjaran writes that HIV-positive bodies in Iran “live outside of what can be considered culturally intelligible in terms of seropositivity, sexuality, and gender.””^[64] As my previous analysis has demonstrated, queer Iranians violate normative expectations of gender and sexuality, and thus exist at a state-mediated limit condition. But the HIV-positive Iranian—a category which commonly overlaps with queer identity—experiences bodily abjection. As Robert Phillips writes, “[Abjection] refers to the process by which identificatory regimes exclude subjects that they render unintelligible or beyond classification.”^[65] The abject, or the “in-between, the ambiguous, the composite,” is literally “cast out” and occupies a “borderline uncertainty” which is perceived by the Other as “ambiguous, horrifying, and polluting.” Kristeva is careful to note that abjection is not “an absence of health or cleanliness […] but that which perturbs an identity, a system, an order.”^[66] But above all, the central characteristic of the abject is that it is perceived with horror which manifests as disproportionate and embodied disgust. It is an emotive, affective marker which is bound up in sociopolitical meaning. In Iran, the abjection experienced by HIV-positive people is inseparable from the perception of injecting/intravenous-drug use (IDU) as abjection. As Margrit Shildrick writes, 

“[T]he most visible boundary of all, the skin, is both the limit of the embodied self and the site of potentially transgressive psychic investments. In consequence, any compromise of the organic unity and self-completion of the skin may signal monstrosity.”^[67]

Abjection and embodied transgression present a bridge between authoritarian control of affect and authoritarian control of biopolitics. Through infusing the visceral emotions of monstrosity with political designations of health and humanity, the previously-discussed processes of identity control and limit conditioning are charged with an electric sensorium of horror and disgust. 

The prowess of abjection is in understanding the stigma faced by drug users and HIV-positive people as a “biopolitically performative process,” instead of as a stable feature of a cultural frontispiece. The subject of abjection, Butler argues, is excluded not as a matter of destruction but of constitution. The non-abject is made known through the abject, and this project of abjection has biopolitical ends. Through framing addiction with embodied horror and “transgressive psychic investments,” sovereign power is able to inscribe the politics of choice onto its abjected bodies. As Suzanne Fraser expounds, 

From this point of view, addiction should not be reified as a fixed attribute that attracts stigma, one that, as Nora Volkow has argued, can be destigmatised if only we see that it is a sickness of the brain characterised by a ‘diseased’ ‘free will’, or even as essentially a problem ruthlessly mobilised in the ‘service of power’. Instead it is a biopolitical designation at the centre of a profound process in which a constitutive outside of irrationality and dependence emerges to consolidate the modernist centre of rationality and autonomy. In practical terms, that is, addiction is a means by which contemporary liberal subjects are schooled and disciplined in the forms of conduct and dispositions required to belong, and to count as fully human.^[68]

It is through the joint abjection of addiction and infection that IRI biopower is able to marginalize its undesirables not only through coercively managing their genders and sexualities, or rendering them legally bare, but through provoking a damaged image of a flawed capacity for will (as it exists in the modern imaginary) and subsequent sub-humanity. This conjoined style of oppression exemplifies how the authoritarian Iranian regime utilizes biopolitical means to generate conditions of death at the same time it engages in life-giving and management (through the surgical option, surveillance, etc.). 

Ultimately, queer biopolitics as an analytical methodology has been applied as a kind of productive hermeneutics for this paper—both of the lived conditions of queer Iranian people and bodies, and a wider set of sociopolitical situations. Through analyzing the intertwined struggles of gay and trans* Iranians and the regime’s usage of the “surgical option” and other medical authorities as a means of pathologizing deviant genders and sexualities, I came to understand how queer Iranians are bursting open conventional notions of resistance through a novel form of praxis which has yet to be described. From there, I examined the shifting conditions of queer oppression across presidential regimes, which allowed me to use Agamben’s theory of limit conditions to understand what the regime has to gain from said oppression. In order to draw these theorizations into material reality, I evaluated Iranian digital repression and surveillance and its disproportionate impact on queer bodies (whether physical or virtual). Finally, we examined HIV/AIDS and injected drug use to explore abjection and its capacity to explain how stigma itself is a performative biopolitical process. These theoretical findings are the result of using queer biopolitics to illustrate how Iranian authoritarian biopower capitalizes on the control of queer life and death, both as an end in-of-itself, as a a means towards other forms of oppression and control on its non-queer citizenry. And these findings only beg more questions: what role does the queer Iranian diaspora play into authoritarian biopolitics? How do queer Iranian refugees experience these sociopolitical levers of control? Finally, what is the role of transnational queer alliances and networks, if any, in helping Iranian queer citizens to overcome these forms of oppression? My hope is that applying queer biopolitics has revealed the crucial insights available when we dare to interrogate the spaces between systems of oppression. 

References

^[1] Azoulay, D. D. (2011). The biopolitics of gender in Iran: How a “third gender” has formed. Juridikum Queering Family Law, 2, 261-269.

^[2] Zara Saeidzadeh; Understanding Socio-Legal Complexities of Sex Change in Postrevolutionary Iran. TSQ 1 February 2019; 6 (1): 80–102. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-7253510

^[3] Leezenberg, M. (2018). Foucault and Iran Reconsidered: Revolt, Religion, and Neoliberalism. Īrān-nāmag, 3(2), IV-XXVIII.

^[4] Ghamari-Tabrizi, B. (2016). Foucault in Iran: Islamic revolution after the enlightenment. U of Minnesota Press.

^[5] Foucault, Essential Writings 3: 44; Dits et écrits, III: 781.

^[6] Ghamari-Tabrizi, B. 

^[7] In the context of critical theory, the term analytic is typically used independently of analysis, to describe a ex-ante method rather than an ex-post set of analytical conclusions.

^[8] Leezenberg, M. Page 25

^[9]  Kähkönen, L., & Sudenkaarne, T. (2018). Queer, Biopolitics and Bioethics. SQS–Suomen Queer-tutkimuksen Seuran lehti, 12(1-2), XI-XIX.

^[10] Azoulay, D. D. (2011). The biopolitics of gender in Iran: How a “third gender” has formed. Juridikum Queering Family Law, 2, 261-269.

^[11] Afary, J. (2009). Sexual politics in modern Iran. Cambridge University Press.

^[12] Ibid.

^[13] Please note that this is the term used by Azoulay, and not the appropriate term suggested by the author to described trans* or non-binary people in Iran.

^[14] Bahreini, R. (2008). From perversion to pathology: discourses and practices of gender policing in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Muslim World Journal of Human Rights, 5(1).

^[15] Ibid.

^[16] Butler, J. (2011). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. Routledge, 89-90.

^[17] Butler, 60

^[18] Bahreini, R. 60-62.

^[19] Zara Saeidzadeh; Understanding Socio-Legal Complexities of Sex Change in Postrevolutionary Iran. TSQ 1 February 2019; 6 (1): 80–102. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-7253510

^[20] Ibid.

^[21] Ibid.

^[22] Puar, J. K. (2018). Terrorist assemblages: Homonationalism in queer times. Duke University Press.

^[23] Godelier, M. (1981). The origins of male domination. New Left Review.

^[24] Butler, J. 153

^[25] Foss, S. K., Domenico, M. E., & Foss, K. A. (2012). Gender stories: Negotiating identity in a binary world. Waveland Press.

^[26] Foucault, M. (1984). The foucault reader. Pantheon. Page 120-123.

^[27] Ibid.

^[28] Ahuja, N. (2015). Intimate atmospheres: Queer theory in a time of extinctions. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 21(2-3), 365-385.

^[29] Connell, R. (2011). Gender and social justice: Southern perspectives. South African Review of Sociology, 42(3), 103-115.

^[30] Katarzyn Korycki and Nasirzadeh Abouzar, “ Desire Recast: The Production of Gay Identity in Iran,” Journal of Gender Studies 25 (2014): 50–65 10.1080/09589236.2014.889599

^[31] Ibid.

^[32] Ibid.

^[33] Rouhani, F. (2016). Queering the “Iranian” and the “Diaspora” of the Iranian Diaspora. In Gender and Sexuality in Muslim Cultures (pp. 371-386). Routledge.

^[34] Rao, R. (2015). Echoes of imperialism in LGBT activism. Echoes of Empire: Memory, Identity and Colonial Legacies, 355-372.

^[35] Ibid.

^[36] Hassan, H. D. (2007, April). Iran: Profile and Statements of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Library of Congress, Washington D.C. Congressional Research Service. 

^[37] Rouhani, F. (2016). Queering the “Iranian” and the “Diaspora” of the Iranian Diaspora. In Gender and Sexuality in Muslim Cultures (pp. 371-386). Routledge.

^[38] Ibid.

^[39] Neal, A. (2007, September). Giorgio Agamben and the politics of the exception. In Conference Paper, Sixth Pan-European International Relations Conference of the 2016 ECPR General Conference Standing Group on International Relations in Turin (pp. 12-15).

^[40] Agamben, G., & Hiepko, A. (2002). Homo sacer (p. 174). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Page 123.

^[41] Ibid. Page 125

^[42] Michaelsen, M. (2017). Far Away, So Close: Transnational Activism, Digital Surveillance and Authoritarian Control in Iran. Surveillance & Society, 15(3/4), 465-470.

^[43] Berman, I. (2015). Iranian devolution: Tehran fights the digital future. World Affairs, 51-57.

^[44] Kendall-Taylor, A., Frantz, E., & Wright, J. (2020). “The Digital Dictators: How Technology Strengthens Autocracy.” Foreign Affairs, 99(2), 103-115.

^[45] Zheng, M. (2019) Queer Biopolitics in Authoritarian China. Virginia Journal of Gender Studies. Forthcoming.

^[46] Ibid.

^[47] Nasirzadeh, A. (2015). The Role of Social Media in the Lives of Gay Iranians. Social Media in Iran: Politics and Society after 2009, 57-75.

^[48] Ibid.

^[49] Ibid.

^[50] Kjaran, J. I., & Martino, W. (2019). In search of queer spaces in Tehran: Heterotopias, power geometries and bodily orientations in queer Iranian men’s lives. Sexualities, 22(4), 587-604.

^[51] Ibid. ‘The bodily horizon shows the ‘‘line’’ that bodies can reach toward, what is reachable, by also marking what they cannot reach’.

^[52] Ibid.

^[53] Jafari, F. (2014). Transsexuality under Surveillance in Iran: Clerical Control of Khomeini’s Fatwas. Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, 10(2), 31-51.

^[54] Conrad, K. (2009). Surveillance, gender, and the virtual body in the information age. Surveillance & Society, 6(4), 380-387.

^[55] Van der Ploeg, I. (2003). Biometrics and the body as information. Surveillance as social sorting: Privacy, risk and digital discrimination, 57-73.

^[56] Ibid.

^[57] Haraway, D.J. (1991) Simians, Cyborgs and Women. The Reinvention of Nature, London: Free Association Books.

^[58] Lianos, M. and Douglas, M. (2000) “Dangerization and the End of Deviance: The Institutional Environment,” in R. Sparks and D. Garland (eds) Criminology and Social Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press

^[59] Ibid.

^[60] Wang, Y., & Kosinski, M. (2018, October 23). Deep neural networks are more accurate than humans at detecting sexual orientation from facial images. Retrieved from osf.io/zn79k

^[61] Heidary, M., & Nasiri, M. J. (2016). Why has HIV/AIDS prevalence increased in Iran?. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 63(6), 846.

^[62] Karamouzian, M., Akbari, M., Haghdoost, A. A., Setayesh, H., & Zolala, F. (2015). “I am dead to them”: HIV-related stigma experienced by people living with HIV in Kerman, Iran. Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, 26(1), 46-56.

^[63] Ibid.

^[64] Kjaran, J. I. (2019). The “Sick Gay”: Being HIV-positive in Iran. In Gay Life Stories (pp. 151-180). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

^[65] Phillips, R. (2014). Abjection. Transgender Studies Quarterly, 1(1-2), 19-21.

^[66] Kristeva, J. (1982). Approaching abjection. Oxford Literary Review, 5(1-2), 125-149.

^[67] Shildrick, M. (1999) ‘This Body which is Not One: Dealing with Differences’, Body & Society 5(2–3): 77–92

^[68]  Fraser, S., Pienaar, K., Dilkes-Frayne, E., Moore, D., Kokanovic, R., Treloar, C., & Dunlop, A. (2017). Addiction stigma and the biopolitics of liberal modernity: A qualitative analysis. International Journal of Drug Policy, 44, 192-201.

Works Cited

Afary, Janet. Sexual politics in modern Iran. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Agamben, G., & Hiepko, A. (2002). Homo sacer (p. 174). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Page 123.

Ahuja, Neel. “Intimate atmospheres: Queer theory in a time of extinctions.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 21, no. 2-3 (2015): 365-385.

Azoulay, Donna D. “The biopolitics of gender in Iran: How a “third gender” has formed.” Juridikum Queering Family Law 2 (2011): 261-269.

Bahreini, Raha. “From perversion to pathology: discourses and practices of gender policing in the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Muslim World J. Hum. Rts. 5 (2008): i.

Berman, Ilan. “Iranian devolution: Tehran fights the digital future.” World Affairs (2015):

Butler, Judith. Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. routledge, 2011.

Connell, Raewyn. “Gender and social justice: Southern perspectives.” South African Review of Sociology 42, no. 3 (2011): 103-115.

Conrad, Kathryn. “Surveillance, gender, and the virtual body in the information age.” Surveillance & Society 6, no. 4 (2009): 380-387.

Foss, Sonja K., Mary E. Domenico, and Karen A. Foss. Gender stories: Negotiating identity in a binary world. Waveland Press, 2012.

Foucault, Michel, and Paul Rabinow. “Essential works of Foucault, 1954-1988.” (1997).

Kähkönen, Lotta, and Tiia Sudenkaarne. “SQS 1–2/2018: Sisällys/Innehåll/Contents.”

Foucault, M. (1984). The foucault reader. Pantheon. Page 120-123.

Fraser, Suzanne, Kiran Pienaar, Ella Dilkes-Frayne, David Moore, Renata Kokanovic, Carla Treloar, and Adrian Dunlop. “Addiction stigma and the biopolitics of liberal modernity: A qualitative analysis.” International Journal of Drug Policy 44 (2017): 192-201.

Ghamari-Tabrizi, Behrooz. Foucault in Iran: Islamic revolution after the enlightenment. U of Minnesota Press, 2016.

Godelier, Maurice. The origins of male domination. New Left Review, 1981.

Haraway, Donna. Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. Routledge, 2013.

Hassan, Hussein D. “Iran: Profile and Statements of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.” LIBRARY OF CONGRESS WASHINGTON DC CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE, 2007.

Heidary, Mohsen, and Mohammad Javad Nasiri. “Why has HIV/AIDS prevalence increased in Iran?.” Clinical Infectious Diseases 63, no. 6 (2016): 846.

Jafari, Farrah. “Transsexuality under Surveillance in Iran: Clerical Control of Khomeini’s Fatwas.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 10, no. 2 (2014): 31-51.

Karamouzian, Mohammad, Maryam Akbari, Ali-Akbar Haghdoost, Hamidreza Setayesh, and Farzaneh Zolala. ““I am dead to them”: HIV-related stigma experienced by people living with HIV in Kerman, Iran.” Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care 26, no. 1 (2015): 46-56.

Korycki, Katarzyna, and Abouzar Nasirzadeh. “Desire recast: the production of gay identity in Iran.” Journal of Gender Studies 25, no. 1 (2016): 50-65.

Kendall-Taylor, Andrea, Erica Frantz, and Joseph Wright. “The digital dictators: how technology strengthens autocracy.” Foreign Aff. 99 (2020): 103.

Kjaran, Jón Ingvar. “The “Sick Gay”: Being HIV-positive in Iran.” In Gay Life Stories, pp. 151-180. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2019.

Kjaran, Jón Ingvar, and Wayne Martino. “In search of queer spaces in Tehran: Heterotopias, power geometries and bodily orientations in queer Iranian men’s lives.” Sexualities 22, no. 4 (2019): 587-604.

Leezenberg, Michiel. “Foucault and Iran Reconsidered: Revolt, Religion, and Neoliberalism.” Īrān-nāmag 3, no. 2 (2018): IV-XXVIII.

Lianos, Michaelis, and with Mary Douglas. “Dangerization and the end of deviance: the institutional environment.” British Journal of Criminology 40, no. 2 (2000): 261-278.

Michaelsen, Marcus. “Far Away, So Close: Transnational Activism, Digital Surveillance and Authoritarian Control in Iran.” Surveillance & Society 15, no. 3/4 (2017): 465-470.

Nasirzadeh, Abouzar. “The Role of Social Media in the Lives of Gay Iranians.” Social Media in Iran: Politics and Society after 2009 (2015): 57-75.

Neal, Andrew. “Georgio Agamben and the politics of the exception.” In Sixth Pan-European International Relations Conference of the SGIR, Turin. 2007.

Phillips, Robert. “Abjection.” Transgender Studies Quarterly 1, no. 1-2 (2014): 19-21.

Puar, Jasbir K. Terrorist assemblages: Homonationalism in queer times. Duke University Press, 2018.

Rao, Rahul. “Echoes of imperialism in LGBT activism.” Echoes of Empire: Memory, Identity and Colonial Legacies (2015): 355-72.

Rouhani, Farhang. “Queering the “Iranian” and the “Diaspora” of the Iranian diaspora.” Gender and sexuality in Muslim cultures (2016): 371-386.

Shildrick, Margrit. “This body which is not one: Dealing with differences.” Body & Society 5, no. 2-3 (1999): 77-92.

Van der Ploeg, Irma. “Biometrics and the body as information.” Surveillance as social sorting: Privacy, risk and digital discrimination (2003): 57-73.

Wang, Yilun, and Michal Kosinski. “Deep neural networks are more accurate than humans at detecting sexual orientation from facial images.” Journal of personality and social psychology 114, no. 2 (2018): 246.

Saeidzadeh, Zara. “Understanding Socio-Legal Complexities of Sex Change in Postrevolutionary Iran.” Transgender Studies Quarterly 6, no. 1 (2019): 80-102.

Zheng, M. (2019) Queer Biopolitics in Authoritarian China. Virginia Journal of Gender Studies. Forthcoming.

“There is no “logic” of anarchy apart from the practices that create and instantiate one structure of identities and interests rather than another; structure has no existence or causal powers apart from process. Self-help and power politics are institutions, not essential features of anarchy.”

• Alexander Wendt, Anarchy Is What States Make of It

Abstract:

For decades, questions about how to engage Iran have vexed American policymakers. Critics of engagement argue Iran is a threat to stability and needs to be contained, with sanctions imposing pressure. On the other hand, proponents of engagement claim that sanctions and pressure are ineffective, merely empowering hardliners in Iran. These debates grew in intensity following the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), where the Obama administration lifted sanctions in exchange for limits on Iran’s nuclear program. The debate has only grown since the Trump administration withdrew from the deal, leaving the United States at an impasse in 2021—should the JCPOA be rejoined or sanctions continued? While both sides have merit, this article argues that the current debate suffers from a limitation. In evaluating sanctions, much of the existing literature appeals to a strictly rationalist account of how actors make decisions, positing that countries such as Iran behave solely as self-interested actors pursuing economic and security-related goods. This paper aims to broaden the scope of the debate over U.S.-Iran policy by introducing a new perspective, constructivism, that begins not by asking how sanctions affect Iran’s self-interest, but instead by defining what Iran’s interests, values, and motivations are. Exploring social science, Iranian history, culture, and population-level dynamics, this paper concludes that sanctions can and have been effective against Iran, not merely because of economic pressure but because of what sanctions represent to Iran’s leaders and people: isolation, dependence, stigma, and exclusion. These motivations—traceable to culture, popular sentiment, and history—are often missed in contemporary sanctions literature. As a result, this paper prescribes how the United States can use this to form effective policy, proposing a dual track of pressure and engagement to achieve a novel deal that improves on the framework of the JCPOA.

Introduction:

“This agreement represents our best chance to stop an Iranian bomb without another war in the Middle East;”[1] “We have found the best available option by peaceful means rather than pursuing a worse option through war.”[2]

“The Iran deal is defective at its core;”[3] “This was a horrible, one-sided deal;”[4] “At the heart of the Iran deal was a giant fiction that a murderous regime desired only a peaceful nuclear energy program.”[5]

Since its birth in July of 2015, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or “Iran Deal” has been mired in controversy, with some labeling it a masterstroke that will hold off Iranian proliferation and others viewing it as a tragic mistake. Proponents argue that the deal ensures Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon is delayed, if not destroyed, while opponents claim that Iran will pocket the sanctions relief and, continuing their uranium enrichment, wait for the day when the deal expires. Both sides surely have merit, but the opponents of the deal won out in May of 2018, when President Donald Trump announced withdrawal from the JCPOA. The other parties involved in the negotiation, namely Iran and European allies, announced their commitment to remain by the terms of the agreement even following U.S. withdrawal, but it was to no avail—the imposition of U.S. sanctions on Iran resulted in the deal entering a death spiral, and Iran eventually ceased compliance.

Since then, relations between the U.S. and Iran have become as bad as ever. Following the resumption of sanctions, the Iranian economy has cratered, entering a recession of historic proportions. Meanwhile, the killing of Iranian Major General Qassim Suleimani in January of 2020 resulted in a political crisis that culminated in a downed airliner over Iran and an attack on a U.S. airbase in Iraq. Near the one-year anniversary of Suleimani’s killing, Iran seized a South Korean tanker in a gambit to pressure South Korea to aid them in skirting U.S. sanctions. Around the same time, Iran announced that they would begin enriching uranium at an alarmingly high level of 20%, putting them within reach of enrichment that would suffice for creating a nuclear bomb. Yet, upon doing so, Iranian leaders made sure to emphasize that this could all end, provided the United States return to compliance with the JCPOA.

Against this backdrop, President Biden has a choice: he can take Iran up on its offer and rejoin the JCPOA, or he can push for something additional. An old negotiating adage is to never accept the first offer: the stronger strategy is to use it as a starting point and use it to secure something even better. This logic is applicable in the case of the JCPOA. While superior to no deal, the JCPOA contains many defects that could be ameliorated by a follow-on deal. The United States should maintain a redline on uranium enrichment, refuse sunset provisions, and walk away from any deal that fails to include those elements.  Doing so is necessary for the sanctity of the non-proliferation regime. Notably, Iran is the one making overtures, not the United States: this signals that the United States holds the leverage.

However, Iran will not be an easy negotiating partner. U.S. policy on Iran is a graveyard of decades of ineffective sanctions and failed attempts at diplomacy. This paper approaches the question of U.S. sanctions by asking a simple question: what makes sanctions effective in general, and what makes them effective in the case of Iran? In doing so, the paper notes two features of current debates surrounding sanctions and Iran. First, such debates are grounded primarily in theories that rely on assumptions of rationalism, positioning Iran as a utility-maximizing state that will respond rationally to economic pressures. Second, discussions of sanctions within the realist tradition focus primarily on Iran as a coherent political entity, with little to no discussion of how internal regime dynamics affect Iranian responses to sanctions.  

This paper argues that these assumptions may obscure as much as they illuminate. Instead, sanctions should be examined through a constructivist lens, or the “social perspective” theory of sanctions. Sanctions do not solely operate as a means of applying economic pressure, but instead have power through what they signify: isolation from the international system, labeling a state as a pariah.

The thesis of this paper is that Iran’s strategic culture, history, and internal regime dynamics make sanctions uniquely effective, a perspective that is obscured by the rationalist and realist assumptions of contemporary analysis on Iran. A detailed study of Iran, both over the past several centuries and today, serves to derive a set of ideational variables that motivate Iran, variables that can be influenced through a sanctions regime. Coupled with an analysis of the precarity of the Iranian regime in the face of current protests, sanctions may “punch above their weight,” doing more to alter Iranian behavior than traditional literature on sanctions may suggest. This helps to explain why, despite their overall ineffectiveness across multiple countries, sanctions were effective in getting Iran to come to the negotiating table for the JCPOA initially.

The paper then concludes with a specific proposal for how U.S.-Iran policy should be negotiated in light of this new constructivist understanding of sanctions. While a pressure track of sanctions is desirable, it must be designed with a set of clearly demarcated carrots and sticks, a calibrated set of incentives aimed to induce compliance. A pressure track must be accompanied by an engagement track. Recent social science has indicated that engagement and tit-for-tat reciprocity can be effective as a negotiating tactic, findings that are especially salient in the case of Iran. Using these tactics, the United States will be able to seek to negotiate and achieve a better alternative to the JCPOA: a deal that includes a prohibition on uranium enrichment and avoids the use of sunset provisions.

The paper makes a necessary contribution to the literature. The dominant trend in discussing U.S. policy towards Iran has been security-centric, approaching it from a positivist lens that views Iran as security-seeking and the Iranian nuclear program as a threat to U.S. interests. While most literature on this question applies a liberal or realist lens, this paper contributes a constructivist perspective, analyzing the ideational variables that motivate Iran. Relatedly, the paper includes one of the only analyses of sanctions from a constructivist perspective, situating U.S. sanctions on Iran within the context of Iranian culture and society, perspectives that are frequently overlooked.

While providing a useful analytic for understanding Iranian behavior, the paper also explicates these observations within the context of specific policy recommendations, creating a set of actionable steps for policymakers to negotiate a successful improvement to the JCPOA. This synthesizes previously separate aspects of the literature. Many scholars recommend improvements to the JCPOA, while many others study sanctions, and more yet analyze Iranian culture. Comparatively few, however, examine the intersection of these three literature bases. Instead of keeping these traditions separate, the paper analyzes them together and contributes a useful theoretical lens of constructivism. By possessing a deeper understanding of what motivates Iran, backed by social science, policymakers can hopefully achieve results in negotiations that exceed expectations.

Section 1: U.S.-Iranian Conflict

Tensions between the United States and Iran reached a boiling point on January 3, 2020, when Iranian Major General Qassim Suleimani was killed by a targeted U.S. drone strike near Baghdad International Airport.[6] The leader of the powerful Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp, Suleimani was known to be the architect of significant Iranian intelligence and military operations, and his assassination dealt a crippling blow to Iran’s geopolitical planning.[7] In an official statement following the drone strike, the Pentagon claimed that Suleimani was “actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.”[8]

While the killing of Suleimani was the most salient example of a deterioration in U.S.-Iranian relations, the problem is more protracted than the killing of a single military commander. This killing takes place against the backdrop of unprecedented sanctions and economic decoupling, disputes over Iranian support for terrorism and attempts at a nuclear program, and disagreements about the role that Iran should have in the Middle East. It has been argued that Iran views itself as a great power waiting to emerge, tapping into a rich cultural heritage that dates back as far as the days of the Persian Empire, when what is modern-day Iran had significant geopolitical influence not only in the region, but across the globe.[9] Additionally, as a theocracy, Iran sees its mission as spreading Islam throughout the region, supporting militant groups such as Hezbollah.[10] In contrast, the U.S. view of Iran is markedly different: from the U.S. perspective, Iran is a state sponsor of terror, an unstable theocracy dangerously close to acquiring a nuclear weapon, and a provocateur in an already-unstable region.[11]

However, a turning point ostensibly took place in 2008 with the election of President Barack Obama. As he campaigned on achieving change both domestically and abroad, many wagered that President Obama would aim to overturn the established consensus on U.S.-Iran relations. In 2009, President Obama recorded a video intended for Iran where he expressed hope for a “new beginning,” communicating the sentiment directly to the people of Iran.[12] While acknowledging that the two countries had “serious differences that have grown over time,” President Obama indicated a desire to “seek instead engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect.”[13]

Six years later in 2015, the result was a historic agreement: the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), colloquially known as the “Iran Deal.” One of President Obama’s signature foreign policy accomplishments, the JCPOA was reached between Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany). The core of the deal was simple, offering sanctions relief in exchange for restrictions on Iran’s nuclear problem. According to the White House, prior to the deal Iran could have produced one bomb’s worth of fissile material within 2 to 3 months. Known as the “breakout time,” this is an estimate of how quickly Iran could proliferate if it “sprinted toward a bomb.”[14]

As part of the JCPOA, the United States obtained several key guarantees. First, Iran was required to reduce its centrifuges by two-thirds, reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium by 98%, and limit uranium enrichment to 3.67%.[15] The enrichment limit of 3.67% is particularly critical. Iran had previously been enriching at 20%, which is known to be a major technological milestone—enrichment at 20% crosses the highest technological hurdle to enriching at 90%, which is weapons-grade enrichment.[16] Second, Iran was required to provide comprehensive inspection access to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), allowing sweeping inspections of its nuclear facilities.[17] In addition, Iran had to close several nuclear facilities. According to the White House, these steps taken in conjunction would raise Iran’s breakout time from 2-3 months to at least 1 year.[18] With this extended window, the United States would have a year to calibrate responses if Iran were sprinting toward a bomb.

In exchange, Iran received numerous benefits. First and most critically, Iran received a tremendous amount of sanctions relief.[19] While sanctions remained in place for conventional weapons, terror support, human rights abuses, and destabilizing regional activities, the United States and international parties lifted all nuclear-related sanctions.[20] These international sanctions were starving the Iranian economy of over 100 billion dollars a year, and Iran was desperate to attain this much-needed relief.[21] Second, Iran was permitted to enrich uranium below the 3.67% enrichment cap imposed in the deal. This was a historic and unprecedented guarantee.[22] Traditionally, the United States has told non-nuclear states that, if interested in nuclear energy, they would be permitted light-water reactors, which the United States will assist with building. However, enrichment for the purpose of nuclear energy has traditionally been a red line, as allowing enrichment runs a risk that weapons-grade material could be enriched. However, the JCPOA allowed Iran to enrich, a guarantee afforded to no other country. Third, Iran secured a “sunset provision” in the agreement, allowing the restrictions on Iran’s centrifuges to expire after 10 years and the limitations on uranium to disappear after 15 years.[23]  

However, in 2018, President Trump withdrew from the deal and unilaterally resumed sanctions, having claimed that it was the “worst, horrible, laughable” in 2015, and arguing that it lacked verification, lost U.S. negotiating leverage, and did not secure assurances concerning Iranian regional activities.[24] For about a year after the U.S. resumed sanctions, Iran remained in compliance with the JCPOA. However, in June 2019 Iran announced that it would renege on the key components of the deal, increasing enrichment of uranium beyond the 3.67% cap and that it would increase its stockpile.[25] Every few months, Iran ramped up enrichment further, moving to 4.5% enrichment by July 2019, developing more advanced centrifuges in September 2019, and injecting uranium gas into centrifuges in November 2019.[26] Following the January 2020 strike on Qassim Suleimani, Iran announced that it would not be complying with any aspect of the deal, and by January 2021 Iran was enriching at the precarious 20% level, providing the capacity to quickly reach the weapons-grade level of 90%.[27]

However, Iran has not gone unscathed during this time. Following the 2018 resumption of sanctions by the United States, Iran has been hit harder than ever. With the reimposition of banking and oil sanctions, Iran’s economy has fallen into a devastating recession. By October of 2019, Iran’s annualized GDP growth rate was -9%, a far cry from its 12% number in October 2016 after sanctions relief was provided.[28] Within a year, Iranian oil production plummeted from nearly 4 million barrels a day to barely 2 million barrels a day, and the Iranian currency (the Rial) lost 50% of its value against the U.S. dollar.[29] Inflation soared to 30.5% in 2018, with inflation particularly high for food items; the IMF estimated that Iran’s meat products were 116% more expensive in April 2019 than in the prior year.[30]

The combined effects of economic breakdown, a global pandemic, and existing discontent with the government have fomented mass protests and disruption in Iran. There have been organized protest movements for years, and they have grown more protracted and frequent as time has gone on.[31] There have been over 2,500 protests from January 2018 to October 2019, demonstrating an increased pace from previous years.[32] Notably, June 2018, the bazaari protests involved urban merchants taking to the streets to protest currency devaluation, resulting in industry shutdowns in some sectors.[33]

Many analysts have argued that the economic situation has grown increasingly precarious for Iran, and that Iran is desperate to cut a deal. Due to their desperation, Iran may be more willing to run risks. In early January 2021, Iran seized a South Korean oil tanker, aiming to gain leverage to gain “access to hard currency oil revenues frozen in South Korean banks because of US sanctions.”[34] January 2021 was a notable month—during the one year anniversary of Qassim Suleimani’s assassination, President Trump dispatched B-52 bombers and a nuclear-powered submarine to the Persian Gulf to maintain order in the event that Iran attempted destabilizing activities.[35] Iran, facing total economic breakdown, is playing a game of chicken by trying to show the United States that “it has potent cards to play” while falling short of justifying a U.S. military response.[36]

 The tactic is aimed at negotiating with President Biden. The combination of destabilizing regional activities and enrichment of uranium at 20% are clear negotiating tactics: Iran aims to communicate that “the longer Biden waits, the more 20 percent-enriched uranium Iran will have and the closer it will be to ‘breakout’.”[37] If Iran’s activities were not a clear enough signal, Iranian statements are. Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, wrote online that “Our measures are fully reversible upon FULL compliance by ALL.” This indicates a clear desire to get sanctions relief immediately.

Section 2: The Conventional Wisdom on Sanctions

For decades, the United States has had sanctions in some form imposed on Iran. Following the 1979 Iran Revolution, Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy and took diplomats hostage. The consequences were sanctions and the freezing of $12 billion in Iranian assets.[38] In 1984, the U.S. Department of State designated Iran a state sponsor of terrorism and imposed additional sanctions.[39] In 1992, the U.S. Congress passed the Iran-Iraq Arms Nonproliferation Act of 1992, imposing sanctions for Iran’s under the pretense  transfer of technology related to chemical, biological, nuclear, or advanced conventional weapons.[40] In 1996, the U.S. Congress went after the Iran petroleum industry, believing that the industry was contributing to Iran financing terrorism—this culminated in the Iran Sanctions Act.[41] While the aforementioned sanctions were primarily unilateral, international sanctions began to take force in 2007 due to concerns about the Iranian nuclear program. The UN Security Council, concerned about uranium enrichment, unanimously adopted Resolution 1747 to slap sanctions on Iran for nuclear program violations.[42] This was followed by 2008’s Resolution 1803 and 2010’s Resolution 1929 which continued to tighten nuclear-related sanctions on Iran, accompanied by domestic policy passed by the European Union and the U.S. Congress directly targeting the Iranian financial sector.[43]

Considered within the broader context of U.S. foreign policy, the extensive use of sanctions is unsurprising. Operating as the center of the world’s financial institutions, the United States possesses extensive leverage, able to use sanctions to cut other countries off from access to capital or financial institutions. Against an adversary, this offers the potential to do substantial damage to the economies of other nations while still falling below the threshold of armed aggression. Commonly referred to as “a measure between wars and words,” sanctions allow U.S. policymakers to feel as if they can “do something” when facing an international crisis.[44]

However, existing empirical research is less than enthusiastic about the efficacy of sanctions. Known as the “sanction paradox,” the academic literature for a period of time overwhelmingly was dominated by the view that, while often used, sanctions “do not work.”[45] A groundbreaking study of sanctions was published in 1985 by Gary Hufbauer, Jeffrey Schott, and Kimberly Ann Elliot (henceforth HSE).[46] Examining 115 cases of sanctions from 1914 to 1990, they found that sanctions achieved success in 40 cases (34% in total). In possibly the most well-known criticism of sanctions and the HSE study, “Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work,” Robert Pape argued that of those 40 cases, few are legitimate successes, finding only 5 successful cases of sanctions out of the 115.[47] Pape argues this is due to a number of factors: states are willing to tolerate external pressure to achieve national interests, can use administrative capabilities to mitigate the economic damage, and can shift damage to the people instead of harming the ruling elite.[48] As a result, Pape claims that sanctions go beyond merely being a “moderately robust arrow in a policymaker’s quiver;” instead, sanctions “have succeeded in only 5 of 115 attempts…a weak instrument.”[49] In a notable response piece by Elliot of HSE, she claims that Pape’s study “sets up a straw man and then boldly proceeds to knock it down,” noting that Pape defines a successful sanctions regime unduly narrowly by focusing on economic sanctions “used in isolation from other tools.”[50] Instead, Elliot claims that while sanctions are of “limited utility” they may be effective, given that the “success rate importantly depends on the type of policy or governmental change sought” and that “it is not true that sanctions ‘never work’.”[51]

Regardless of which methodological choice was ultimately correct, there is clearly an area of consensus: both HSE and Pape are in agreement that sanctions, in the majority of cases, are not effective. More recent empirical evidence has found that the record of sanctions is not uniform, but larger than zero, with a success rate lying between 10% and 30%, depending on the study and methodological choices.[52]

Much of the literature on sanctions is based on a rationalist paradigm of international relations that presumes a set of utility-maximizing, security-seeking states who will respond optimally to a set of externally imposed pressures. In the literature on sanctions, the dominant question of study is how sanctions affect these rational interests, evaluating the extent to which sanctions can apply economic pressure to alter behavior. Known as the “rational actor assumption” in international relations, this presumes a unified and monovalent set of interests that are pursued by states within the international system.[53]

More broadly, this approach must be situated within the realist (and neorealist) tradition of international relations. A tradition with roots extending back thousands of years, realism is the political tradition that emphasizes the competitive and conflictual side of international relations. The objective that all actors hold is attaining power, achieving national interest, and acting against threats to their national security. While classical realism “places emphasis on human and domestic factors” in its study of how political actors aim to achieve security, a major revolution in international relations theory was achieved through the advent of neorealism in the late 1970s.[54] Attributed primarily to Kenneth Waltz in Theory of International Politics (1979), neorealism establishes that there are three levels of analysis: the system, the state, and the individual. For Waltz, the only relevant level of analysis is the system-level. As “external pressure seems to produce internal unity,” changes at the system-level have effects on all levels. Accordingly, the ways that states interact with one another is explained not by individual choices or regime-types, but rather by the pressures exerted on them by an anarchic international system. In this anarchic international system, there is no guarantor of security and no relevant institution that can serve as guarantor. As a result, states can only attain security through self-help and the pursuit of power. Neorealism, while accepting the realist precepts of rationalism and security-seeking, goes a step further: states will hold those as immutable goals due not to individual leaders or regime-type, but rather due to a structural proclivity of the international system.

Much of the literature on sanctions operates within the grammar of rationalism, positing that sanctions will or will not work due to the pressure they can successfully exert on a state. For proponents of sanctions, they will be effective if they can raise costs for a state to a level sufficient for inducing a change in behavior. In contrast, sanctions are unsuccessful if the pressure is too low. In both cases, whether sanctions succeed or fail is determined through the prism of rationalism, or how an objective, utility-maximizing agent would response to external pressures imposed by another actor in the international system.

However, a puzzle emerges: if sanctions are to be understood through a rationalist paradigm, why are the actions of states in relation to sanctions neither uniform nor rational? Examples abound of times when sanctions should have been enough to rationally sway a behavior, but the state incurred unacceptable economic costs in order to pursue a less-valuable objective. Similarly, if the recent empirics are accepted that find sanctions effective in 10-30% of cases, it is hard to explain why sanctions work in some cases but not in others.

A salient example of this phenomenon is Iran, where some have argued that sanctions have been unusually effective. In particular, the targeted sanctions imposed on Iran in 2007 by the UN Security Council and United States have been lauded for their success in applying economic pressure sufficient to force Iran to come to the negotiating table, accepting the Joint Plan of Action (JPA) in 2013 and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015.[55] According to Yesun Yoon, this was a classic ‘carrot and stick’ sanctioning model—robust international sanctions tightened the screws on Iran from 2007 to 2013, resulting in Iran agreeing to an interim deal in 2013 that granted “temporary and modest sanction relief” of $7 billion.[56] Having whet Iran’s appetite for aid with the initial relief, this was followed by the subsequent JCPOA that promised relief totaling $100 billion for full compliance with its terms and conditions.[57]

The success of this strategy was due to the economic and political damage that had been wrought by years of U.S. containment. At the start of the Obama administration, with the exception of Hezbollah, Iran lacked military presence anywhere outside of Iran and Lebanon. At the same time, oil and financial sanctions were substantially damaging the Iranian economy—Iran’s perceived security and economic interests were at stake.[58] According to a study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, sanctions had a deleterious effect on Iran’s main source of revenue, oil exports, with economic sanctions costing Iran over $160 billion in oil revenues since 2012.[59] Specifically, the effects were most acute in 2012 and 2013, with GDP in 2012 plummeting by 7% and staying negative in 2013; the Iranian rial collapsed 51% in 2013, with inflation spiking 35%.[60] Notably, these effects track closely to the timing of negotiations over the JPA and the subsequent JCPOA. Iran, facing the worst of sanctions during this time, went to the negotiating table.

Why were sanctions more effective in Iran than in other cases? Much of the existing academic literature in recent years has tried to find a cogent theory for what defines “effective” as opposed to “ineffective” sanctions. The Peterson Institute for International Economics noted that effective sanctions are defined by measures that hit hard, financial controls being a big part of the sanctions package, and the enforcement of the package through international cooperation.[61] The presence of these variables in the case of the Iran nuclear sanctions were therefore a part of the regime’s success. A separate analysis by Brian O’Toole also claims that sanctions can be designed in ways to maximize effectiveness.[62] Lauding the effectiveness of the Iran nuclear sanctions and sanctions on the Soviet Union, O’Toole argues that sanctions may work “as part of a comprehensive and executable strategy.”[63] Put differently, sanctions work when they have a clear objective. The receiving state must know a set of actionable steps that will result in sanctions relief, allowing sanctions to operate as a “stick” that can easily be avoided by acceding to the demands of the sanctioning country. For O’Toole, this distinguishes Iran nuclear sanctions from sanctions on Cuba or Venezuela. The former aimed at a specific behavioral change (an end to uranium enrichment), while the latter were general behavioral sanctions for the more vague “human rights abuses.”[64] For sanctions to be effective they must be calibrated, leaving them capable of being lifted if behaviors change.    

An additional contributing element to sanction efficacy is making sanctions multilateral, rather than just unilateral. According to Mortlock and O’Toole, multilateral sanctions demonstrate international resolve, which communicates to the target the longevity of the sanctions; they will be therefore less able to secure workarounds and re-route economic benefits through other means, convincing them to surrender early on.[65] One notable example of a challenge in unilateral sanctions arises in the case of sanctions on North Korea. China, not wanting regime collapse in North Korea, actively works to assist North Korea in circumventing unilateral U.S. sanctions.[66] A comprehensive study by Dizaji et al. also lends credence to the view that multilateral sanctions are meaningfully distinct from unilateral sanctions. Studying reductions in military spending associated with sanctions from 1960 to 2017, Dizaji et al. found that multilateral sanctions reduced spending by 77% in the long run, while the chances of success of unilateral sanctions were “statistically insignificant.”[67]

It is clear that the sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program contain many of these features—they were multilateral in nature (supported by the UN Security Council and allies in the European Union), had a specific policy objective, and were calibrated to reward or punish specific behaviors. Some criticisms of Iran sanctions (such as the 2014 analysis by Agnese Macaluso) allege that the sanctions did not trigger a change in policy but instead changed only the Iranian government’s strategy.[68] However, this draws an unnecessary separation between government strategy and policy change. The objective of the sanctions was to put an end to Iran’s nuclear program, and the result was that Iran was willing to come to the negotiating table and accept limits on their program. Regardless of whether one ultimately holds up the JCPOA as a success or not, the sanctions did achieve their stated objectives. Additionally, many of the criticisms of sanctions that Macaluso makes (lacking a clear objective, focusing on regime change, and being uncoordinated) are not true of the multilateral sanctions that were focused primarily on Iran’s nuclear program. As Macaluso acknowledges, in February 2013 Ayatollah Khamenei had refused to negotiate with those that “take up arms against the nation of Iran” but, by September 2013, had declared that Iran would support diplomatic compromise based on the notion of a “heroic flexibility.”[69] This is the sign of a sanctions regime that was effective in securing its goal of getting Iran to negotiate.

All of the above analysis has one key commonality: it approaches the debate over the efficacy of sanctions from the perspective of rationalism and, subsequently, neorealism. Effective sanctions regimes are predicted on the basis of their ability to apply destabilizing amounts of pressure to economies, creating an incentive for a rational player to maximize gains and push to have sanctions neutralized. Multilateral sanctions are theorized to be more effective by demonstrating a greater degree of resolve, while calibrated sanctions are understood to work due to the ability for the targeted state to be coaxed through a “carrot and stick” incentive structure. Under such an incentive structure, benefits or “carrots” are offered to induce desirable behavior, while punishments or “sticks” are held out as deterrents for undesirable behaviors. This also implicitly relies on a precept of realism: the determinant in foreign policy is a material set of interests that relate to security and power. A country such as Iran will want a strong economy and military and will resist sanctions imposed by other international actors to ensure its self-interest is attained.

Section 3: Constructivism and a New Theory of Iranian Sanctions

However, much of the contemporary literature surrounding sanctions is unduly narrow in its focus on rationalism and its appeal to neorealism. This is because the power of sanctions transcends the neorealist understanding of power as directly compelling behavior. Defined by German sociologist Max Weber as “the likelihood that one actor in a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his will despite resistance,” political scientist Michael Brzoska notes that power can have many faces.[70] Power can operate directly by influencing decision-making, indirectly through shaping the ways in which decision-making occurs, and ideologically through shaping norms of proper behavior.[71] Traditional research on sanctions has focused on the more traditionally realist understanding of power as direct, stating that sanctions work (or do not work) due to imposing economic or military hardships on security-seeking, rational actors. According to Brzoska, “[t]hose targeted are seen as rational decision-makers, who will compare the benefits of actions with their costs. Sanctions which are sufficiently large to tip the balance in such a way that costs outweigh benefits will result in the changes of behavior desired by those mandating the sanctions.”[72]

 However, the second and third forms of power have been neglected in the contemporary debate over sanctions. Sanctions can have power that is not just direct but also ideological, serving as a means of enforcing norms and operating as an important symbol within the liberal international system. Under this broader perspective that includes ideational as well as material variables, “[t]he hope is that sanctions will lead to a change in the targeted behavior not because the cost-benefit calculus is affected, but because social relationships are influenced by the sanctions…[t]his view on sanctions, which could be called the social perspective, moves the analysis away from individualistic cost-benefit calculations into the direction of constructivist ideas about appropriate behavior shaped by norms and ideas.”[73]

Contrary to the neorealist tendency to focus exclusively within the Waltzian third level of analysis (the system level), such an approach recognizes that “[s]ocial relationships on several levels can be relevant: relationships within the decision-makers’ family, among the elite group in a country, but also relationships among countries.”[74] This situates the “social perspective” theory of sanctions squarely within the constructivist theory of international relations. Constructivism is contrasted with realism and liberalism as one of the three central categories of major international relations theories. Realism and liberalism differ dramatically from each other in the assumptions they rely on and prescriptions they make for international politics. While realists believe in an inherently conflictual international sphere that makes cooperation temporary and unreliable, liberals believe that strong institutions and democratic values can engender cooperation.[75]

However, despite their many differences, both realists and liberals rely on one central assumption that is not shared by the constructivists: the positivist/rationalist assumption of a utility-maximizing, security-seeking state. Both realism and liberalism accept as given that states have an interest in attaining security and are primarily focused on the Waltzian third level of analysis, or how states interact with one another at the level of the international system; disagreements surround the extent to which cooperation can be found within the anarchic system of international politics. However, constructivists dispute this positivist/rationalist assumption, arguing that knowledge and, subsequently, the interests of states are socially constructed as opposed to being immutably defined.[76] Illustrating the social construction of reality, Alexander Wendt gives the example of nuclear possession—we find 500 British nuclear weapons less threatening than 5 North Korean nuclear weapons. There is nothing intrinsic to the British weapons (the material structure) that make them less threatening; instead, our reaction is driven by the meaning given to the material structure (the ideational structure).[77] Therefore, threats to security within international politics do not have an intrinsic valence. Rather, the social context imbues them with meaning.

This directly challenges the starting point of anarchy in international politics, accepted by both realism and liberalism. For realism and liberalism, states attempt to navigate their way through an anarchic international system in the hopes of attaining security; the anarchic structure of the international system determines the behavior of states.[78] In contrast, constructivists argue that the relationship between structures and actions is not one-dimensional. Instead, “agency and structure are mutually constituted…structures influence agency and…agency influences structures.”[79] Instead of being an immutable characteristic of international politics, “anarchy is what states make of it.”[80] States have the ability to internalize alternate norms or find values contrary to those that require enmity, anarchy, or security-seeking behavior.

Closely related to the above discussion of agency is the constructivist view of identities and interests. While realism and liberalism view states as having a fairly uniform interest of security-attainment, constructivists view identities and interests as being socially constructed.[81] These interests are shaped by culture, nationalism, and a variety of other ideational forces. For example, a uniform interest in security cannot explain why the India-Pakistan border is defined by disputes while the U.S.-Canadian border is not. Similarly, the notion that states will without fail seek power and influence is difficult to square with the actions of countries such as Switzerland that have positioned themselves as a neutral party in many international disputes.[82] Instead, constructivists argue that states construct images of themselves. Interests are not prefigured to be security-driven, but are instead constructed by the state in accordance with its socially constructed identity.[83]

Beyond identifying the motivating factors for individual states, constructivists provide analysis of how such constructed identities shape politics at the international level, contributing to the formation of international norms.[84] Over time, repeated interactions between agents gives birth to norms and expectations of behaviors; these constrain behaviors, prescribe actions, and shape what states view as the “right thing to do.” One salient example is what Nina Tannewald refers to as the “nuclear taboo,” arguing that states have come to internalize a norm that nuclear use is unacceptable, contributing to the construction of an international political standard standard.[85]

This paper aims to situate sanctions within a broader lens of power than is typically assumed, evaluating power not just as direct but as ideological. Using Brzoska’s social perspective theory of sanctions, this paper hopes to explain the efficacy of Iranian sanctions through a different lens. International sanctions are not merely effective by changing the cost-benefit calculations of targeted states, but rather are effective because of what they convey. In contrast to the rationalist perspective, sanctions do not work merely through direct harm to a nation. Instead, “effects on the relationships…are the measure,” with effective sanctions not being defined solely by the amount of pressure, but rather knowledge of the targeted group, their values, and their relationships.[86] Sanctions can serve a role in enforcing particular international norms or messages; this is particularly effective if the sanctions come from international actors “deemed to be of importance” to the target state.[87] From this perspective, in “moving from rationalist to constructivist thinking, the power of sanctions here is their role in strengthening rules and norms of future appropriate behavior.”[88]

From this perspective, there are two key aspects of U.S. sanction policy towards Iran that get overlooked by the trend towards realism and rationalism in assessing sanctions. Due to the assumption of rationalism, the symbolic and norm-related effects of sanctions have gone under-examined. Similarly, due to the fixation of realism on the third level of analysis, an examination of the inner workings of Iranian domestic politics has been obfuscated. Yet, in both cases, these are particularly salient factors for assessing why sanctions have been (and will be) effective in Iran. This paper argues that sanctions represent a form of exclusion and coercion that is unacceptable to the Iranian government due to critical cultural and national norms. Additionally, the political and economic ramifications of sanctions have resulted in strong pressure from below, with ordinary Iranians protesting the conditions present. Both of these factors are not adequately captured by the realist and rationalist assessments of sanctions, yet are determinative factors in explaining the success of Iranian sanctions. They will be addressed in turn, beginning with the social perspective theory of sanctions applied to Iran and Iran’s social identities.

Mahdi Mohammad Nia argues that the realist approach to international relations uniquely fails to explain Iranian foreign policy, which is driven largely by the set of domestic and historical forces at play. Nia points to the relative continuity in Iranian foreign policy since the 1990 collapse of the Soviet Union. The most significant system level transformation in terms of distribution of power has had little effect on the strategies of Iranian foreign policy, which has witnessed “relative stability” since then.[89] Nia argues that this presupposes a materialistic set of interests that Iran has, making the same rationalist assumption that was criticized earlier. Instead of “implementing its interests in terms of low-cost options and instruments…Iran’s foreign policy has been more consistent with ideological interests than national ones.”[90] Nia argues that one can find eight key drivers for Iranian foreign policy that transcend the material interests of security-seeking, rational states, but are illuminated through a constructivist analysis.[91]

The first point of emphasis is the logic of responsibility, or the “ideological objectives that a state pursues out of the nation-state borders as an ideological ‘duty’.”[92] This is contrasted with the logic of consequentiality, which holds that foreign behaviors of a state are adopted due to their consequences. This responsibility stems from the theocratic nature of the state, and Iran has committed to a responsibility that “undertakes the fraternal commitment towards all Muslims, and unsparing support of the oppressed of the world…defending the rights of all Muslims.”[93] This can be seen prominently in the support for Islamic resistance movements, including the financing of jihad globally. These efforts aim at “establishment of a united single world community to rescue deprived and oppressed nations…”[94]

The second point of emphasis is the discourse of counter-hegemonism, derived from the Islamic rule of “Nafy-e Sabil,” or domination over Muslims.[95] The rule is derived from the Koran, stating that “there is no law to allow domination of infidels over Muslims and ways are closed to foreign hegemony over Muslims.”[96] In practice, this manifests itself through a desire in Iran to avoid foreign domination, seeking out alliances with other nations in the third world, Islamic world, and Asia. Examples include joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, urging discourses such as “Look-East Policy” and “South-South Alliances,” and ties with Latin American countries such as Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia.[97] During the Cold War, Ayatollah Khomeini proclaimed that “We don’t get along with any of the powers. We will be under the domination of neither America nor the Soviet Union.”[98] This runs contrary to the realist assumption that states will either “balance or bandwagon” with great powers in a bipolar system —such theories would predict that Iran would be drawn into either the Soviet or American sphere of influence, lending more credence to an ideological view of Iranian foreign policy.

The third point of emphasis is the notion of independence and self-sufficiency, particularly when related to indigenous technology. Having been rendered dependent and subservient to the West for much of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, Iranian leaders believe that Iran must be “self-sufficient enough to be economically independent and economically independent enough to be politically independent.”[99] This also informs much of Iran’s views on their nuclear program, viewing it as a symbol of independence and economic leverage that Iran could exert over Western nations.

The fourth point of emphasis is the discourse of “Persian Nationalism.” This has been present across markedly different regimes. Just as the Shah promised Iranian independence and encouraged Iranians to yearn for the days of the ancient Iranian Empire and its sphere of influence, Ayatollah Khamenei has argued that Iran’s size, historical significance, and cultural superiority require a strong regional role.[100] Once again, this has proximity to the Iranian nuclear program: Iranian leaders, believing themselves to be a continuation of great Persian leaders of the past, argue that they should have the same nuclear fixings as other great powers.

The fifth point of emphasis is the discourse of the “enemy.” Fueled by the “history of intervention, manipulation, and exploitation of the country by foreign powers,” this discourse creates a common enemy that is continually opposed to the interests of the Iranian people.[101] This discourse of the enemy, frequently understood to be the West, results in a distrust of the outside world and an understanding that the outside powers want to harm Iranian interests. Nia noted that it is “difficult to find a speech of Iran’s officials without emphasizing the role of enemy to destruct the Islamic Republic of Iran,” and she finds one speech of Ayatollah Khamenei that mentioned “enemy” 16 separate times.[102] 

The sixth point of emphasis is the discourse of “Islamic Unity” and “Islamic Solidarity,” working to create unity among the Islamic states, ensuring strong economic and political ties across Islamic countries.[103] In the words of Ayatollah Khomeini, “[o]ur Islamic scheme…is to create a kind of unanimity of view among Moslems of the world, to unite the Islamic countries, to establish fraternity among different Moslems of the world, to make a pledge with all Islamic governments of the world.”[104]

The seventh point of emphasis is the discourse of “Martyrdom,” “Jihad,” and “Fearlessness.” This understands warfare as a moral duty provided it is undertaken “as a sign of commitment to the true faith.”[105] Military strategy therefore transcends a simple understanding of victory or defeat–the value instead is about waging a war against oppression and injustice, taken pursuant to an Islamic duty.

The eighth and final point of emphasis is the discourse of “justice,” contributing toward a revisionist approach to foreign policy. Since the creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iranian leaders have seen the international system as an unfair and hierarchical system that unequally distributes power among nations.[106] This is an extension of the Islamic revolutionary viewpoint that the world is structurally divided along antagonistic lines – there is good, and there is evil, with no possibility of compromise. No matter what costs are incurred, Iran therefore has a duty to seek the attainment of justice, even at the cost of economic prosperity or security.[107] This logic is unrecognizable from the realist standpoint, which holds economic and security-related benefits to be sacrosanct. Yet, Ayatollah Khamenei has said that he “prefers defeat to the victory that could be achieved through injustice or oppression,” choosing to wage “justice-driven policies” against Israel while incurring tremendous economic and political costs.[108] 

If these eight principles are the driving forces for Iranian foreign policy, effective sanctions need to closely map onto these interests. After all, these eight principles define the Iranian identity and subsequent interests, serving as the benchmarks by which Iran defines successful foreign policy.

On face, it seems that these principles would doom any type of negotiations at the outset. Many of these principles pit Iran against the West (and therefore the United States), with a “previously constructed identity that…determines who is ‘friend’ and who is ‘enemy.’”[109] This creates a self-perpetuating cycle where internal normative structures configure the United States as the enemy, prompting antagonistic policies that force antagonistic responses, validating the initial view of the United States as the enemy.[110]

However, the way out of this cycle is by emphasizing cooperative, reciprocal norms, which position the United States as a potential partner as opposed to the enemy. Here, the United States would approach relations with Iran from the standpoint of reciprocal benefit. Approaching Iran with a good-faith effort to find compromise and reach a mutual understanding has a greater chance of eliciting a positive reaction in response. The dynamics in the relationship are after all, tit-for-tat: an antagonistic action from the United States can be expected to elicit an antagonistic response from Iran. However, this goes both ways. A positive action can elicit a positive response.[111]

This is confirmed by various diplomatic episodes between states with diametrically opposed interests and antagonistic relationships, such as the United States and Iran or the United States and North Korea. With North Korea, the United States sought diplomacy by emphasizing in the late 1990s that there would be an assurance of no nuclear strikes on the country. This spurred arms control diplomacy, which was arguably successful until an eventual relationship breakdown. What caused the breakdown? Some attribute it to “aggressive and confrontational norms” pushed by the Bush administration that labeled North Korea part of the “axis of evil,” antagonizing North Korea.[112] In this example, we see a clear pattern: a tit-for-tat exchange where an initial assurance elicited a positive response, but a later negative action spurred a reciprocal negative response.

This has also been demonstrated in the case of Iran. During the Clinton administration, there was a concerted effort to facilitate engagement and cooperation with Iran diplomatically, and Iranian President Khatami responded by attempting to increase Iranian engagement with Western counties while accepting suspension of uranium enrichment.[113] Similarly, diplomatic overtures by President Obama resulted in diplomatic talks and the eventual JCPOA. In contrast, sudden confrontational approaches have empowered hardliners, resulting in Iran becoming more adamant about the need for a strong nuclear program and support for jihadist groups abroad. A major turning point was the policy of the Bush administration (exemplified by the “Axis of Evil” remarks, around the same time that Iranian President Ahmadinejad came into power). As noted by Nia, “…whenever Iran faced a confrontational normative environment, the state responded more aggressively toward international community.”[114]   

As outlined in Nafy-e Sabil, a fundamental wrong for Iran’s regime is the notion of being governed by non-Muslim nations, a system of rule by the infidels. For Iranian leaders, this is manifested in the current structure of the international order, with institutions that they perceive as existing primarily to secure Western interests. No example is more salient than that of international finance, where the United States exists as the epicenter of Western economics and financial control, having unprecedented sway over capital access. Sanctions, cutting Iran off from such a system, offer a notable “stick”. Iranian financial interests are directly targeted by the Western-led system, hampering the ability for Iran to attain what it believes to be sovereignty and self-governance. However, sanctions can also offer a notable “carrot”—the promise of access to capital. Iran can be granted an assurance that sanctions, once imposed, will, with protracted behavioral changes, remain lifted. This affords Iran a sphere of relative inviolability from the economic Sword of Damocles that the United States otherwise possesses.

Sanctions can also notably target the Iranian emphasis on independence and self-sufficiency, as it relates to indigenous technology. As sanctions strategies have grown more sophisticated, policymakers have become attuned to the value of targeted sanctions that harm particular industries. It is here that sanctions present a stick—the United States can use sanctions to directly undercut the Iranian nuclear energy industry, preventing the acquisition of necessary materials for a fledging nuclear program. As the aforementioned Dizaji et al. study indicated, multilateral sanctions have been associated with a 77% reduction in military spending in previous cases.[115] The flip side of such sanctions is that they also present a carrot—sanctions relief can also ensure that Iran can pursue technological sovereignty. While a nuclear program should remain off-limits, there are alternate ways to achieve technological and energy independence. Some have proposed an alternative that works with Iran to help them develop a light water reactor and nuclear fuel. This offers Iran all of the benefits of nuclear energy, but without the latent risk of nuclear proliferation.[116]

The final way that sanctions can target a core Iranian ideological interest is through the principle of Persian nationalism. For centuries, Persia was at the center of the global stage, a veritable world power that had untold influences on other cultures in the surrounding areas. Those days are long gone, with Iran now existing as an isolated state. Iran lacks military presence anywhere outside of Iran and Lebanon, is an international economic pariah, and lacks much of a seat in international fora. Much of this is due to the role of sanctions, which serve as a means of isolating states from one another. This is particularly true of the UN Security Council sanctions, which secured a coalition of many of the world’s greatest powers to shame and ostracize Iran over its nuclear program. However, it can also be true of unilateral, “secondary sanctions” carried out by the United States, which forced firms to choose between doing business with the United States or with Iran. Such choice was no choice at all, and firms fled from Iran, contributing to its isolation. An isolated state is no great power, and sanctions thus serve as a valuable stick. However, the carrot is also present—Iranian leaders are keenly aware of the uptick in business and economic growth that took place in 2016 after sanctions relief was provided, with economic growth roaring back at a 6.4% clip following a contraction of 1.8% the year before.[117] 

However, as the previous sections have discussed, there have been far too many sanctions regimes that have been rendered ineffective due to poor design choices. Subsequent sections will discuss how a sound sanctions regime can be designed to maximize leverage following the breakdown of the JCPOA.

Section 4: The Regime’s Precarious Footing

In addition to the social perspective theory of sanctions justifying why sanctions are effective against Iran, there is an additional component that is too often overlooked by realist analyses of sanctions: the internal regime pressures that Iran faces. This may create an additional sense of urgency for Iran to find sanctions relief.

To understand the pressure that Iranian leaders face to cut a deal requires understanding the internal state dynamics in Iran. This is due to the fact that economic pressure is, by itself, not a sufficient condition for sanctions to produce a change in behavior. When leaders of a country are secure in their power and able to insulate themselves from the deleterious effects of sanctions, sanctions may produce little to no change at all.[118] After all, leaders of many sanctioned countries are among the most authoritarian leaders in the world: harm to their people is of no real consequence provided it does not threaten their own self-interest.[119] One example is North Korea. Subject to perhaps the most onerous sanctions regime in history, North Korea has withstood sanctions for an extended period of time, despite sanctions suppressing nearly all economic activity. The Kim Regime has a strong grip on power and is able to retain prosperity for the ruling class, which gives no real incentive to cave to U.S. sanctions.[120] Thus, a necessary condition for sanctions efficacy is to directly affect the leadership of a country, either affecting their economic interests or making them fear that they will lose their grip on power.

This paper contends that the current internal political situation in Iran is precarious enough that sanctions will threaten the self-interest of Iranian leaders. Ruling against the backdrop of the 1979 revolution, the Ayatollah and his government are well aware that nothing is permanent when it comes to their lease on power. The Iranian leaders understand that their hold on power requires them to secure prestige and economic benefit to their people, and that Iranians are not averse to rising up and demanding change when it fails to come from the government. Whether perceived or actual, the threat of regime change creates a motivation for Iranian leadership to cut a deal before the economy deteriorates too dramatically. Such a view affords the United States greater leverage than a view focused just on the effectiveness of sanctions across other countries. The unique nature of Iran’s system of government makes sanctions likely to deliver more leverage than in other nations.

By these metrics, the Islamic Republic under the two Ayatollahs has been a dismal failure, raising questions as to the legitimacy of the regime. 12 million Iranians live below the absolute poverty line, with 25 to 30 million living below the poverty line; one-third of Iranians are in danger of falling into poverty.[121] 14% of Iranians live in tents, and 50% of the workforce lacks regular employment. According to official statistics, one out of every eight Iranians are unemployed, and projections of unemployment for 2021 have gotten as dire as 26% under poor conditions.[122] These challenges extend beyond poverty to political and economic challenges relating to mismanagement, corruption, nepotism, and an undiversified economy that is nearly entirely petrol-reliant, with no prospects of structural diversification.[123] Inequality has also spiraled out of control, with Iran’s Gini Coefficient remaining over 0.40 for an extended period of time.[124] The Gini Coefficient is taken to represent inequality. A score of 0.0 is perfect equality, while 1.0 is perfect inequality. A 0.40 score indicates higher-than-average inequality. On the question of inequality, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani found that inequality in 2002 was similar to the level of inequality in 1972, noting that “[t]he findings on inequality raise important questions about the nature of the Islamic Revolution. Did it significantly affect the power structure as a social revolution of its magnitude should have…the finding that inequality in 2002 was about the same as in 1972 raises questions about the significance of the Islamic Revolution as a social and political revolution.”[125]

As a result, it comes as no surprise that protests have existed in Iran for some time. However, the scale and fervor of recent protests provides further support for the view that the Iranian regime stands on precarious ground. Throughout Iranian history, protests in Iran have been a common way for ordinary Iranians to register their discontent. One of the earliest protests in modern-day Iran took place in 1890 with the “Tobacco Protests,” when the shah granted a monopoly over the tobacco industry in Iran to a British subject. Merchants rose up, creating a protesting alliance between the bazaaris (merchant class) and the ulema (Muslim leaders).[126] As discussed previously, the Constitutional Revolution was also a notable protest surrounding economic stagnation and corruption, which resulted in a parliament being formed during the Qajar dynasty.[127] Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the establishment of the modern-day theocracy, a number of protests have also had particular political significance. In the Squatter Protests from 1991 to 1994, urban squatters protested across Tehran, Shiraz, Arak, Mashad, Ghazvin, and Tabriz, protesting attempts to evict them.[128] In the Green Movement, protests broke out challenging the controversial 2009 Iranian presidential election results.[129] From 2011-2012, Iranians took part in the groundswell of protests sweeping the Arab world during the “Arab Spring,” building off of the success of the Green Movement.[130]

While many of these protests died down, with future protests it may be different. A 2019 study of protests in Iran from the 1890s to the present concluded that “while protests in Iran are not new, the number and breadth of protests today are significant compared to previous years.”[131] While the current protest movement “remains fractured and lacks central leadership…”[132] unlikely coalitions are possible, as when the secular intelligentsia formed an alliance with religious leaders to topple the regime of the shah in 1979. Indeed, the protests of 1979, historical protests, and the protests of today share a common through-line—they are largely driven by economic grievances. As noted in the 2019 study, “economic grievances have triggered the vast majority of protests in Iran, a trend which has historical precedents in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. These grievances frequently include rising unemployment, increasing prices of basic commodities, growing inflation, or a recession.”[133] Since the notable Dey Protests of October 2019, there have been over 4,200 protests registered in Iran, occurring in nearly every province of the country.[134] In 2020, the problem became even more pronounced following the incident where Iran accidentally destroyed a Ukrainian passenger jet. Referring to the incident as putting Iran “closer than ever before” to regime collapse, former National Security Advisor Jim Jones claimed that this was a significant turning point for the protests.[135] Following the airliner incident, thousands of Iranians marched in the streets protesting the regime, with chants of “they are lying that our enemy is America, our enemy is right here” and “death, death to the dictator.[136]”

In the West, this has led to prognostications of regime change, with former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton noting that “with the recent protests in Iran, we can see the danger the regime is in.”[137] This was echoed by U.S. Representative Gerry Connolly, who noted that the “clerical rule’s days are numbered.”[138] While these predictions are perhaps premature, the protests show no sign of abating, as the economic problems for the regime remain protracted. U.S. sanctions continue to do severe economic damage, as inflation has skyrocketed while the country has entered a recession.

Decades after the 1979 Revolution, many Iranians question whether the goals of the revolution were achieved. The Iranian Revolution promised three goals: social justice, freedom and democracy, and independence from great power tutelage.[139] In many theocratic systems, the ability for the government to deliver promised benefits to its people is irrelevant; such governments can maintain a veneer of legitimacy through the religious beliefs of their citizens. However, Iran is different—the power of the theocracy was not achieved due to the devout religious beliefs of the Iranian people, but through a series of coalitions formed between secular and religious groups. These coalitions were formed due to the perceived efficacy of the rule of the Ayatollah; failure to achieve the promised benefits would directly undermine the legitimacy of the theocratic system.

Demonstrating the lack of power that religion holds, Tehran political science professor Sadegh Zibakalam argued that a referendum on the Islamic Republic held today would find that over 70% of Iranians oppose the system. This unpopularity spans multiple groups—the wealthy, academics, clerics, villagers, and urban residents.[140] Moreover, what Iranians find important from government is not religious in nature but decidedly more secular: development and a reduction in poverty. The revolution of 1979 was not framed in solely Islamic terms, but instead through the lens of supporting the mostazafin (the downtrodden). This concept is best understood as Marxist-Islamist, rendering the Islamist regime and religion a vehicle for advancing the interests of the marginalized within the shah’s regime.[141] Indeed, one of the primary allures of the Islamic Republic was the promise of shifting from a pro-urban, elite-centered system to a pro-rural and pro-poor approach that prioritized the development of infrastructure in the countryside.[142]

Recent studies have highlighted the dwindling role that religion plays in an increasingly secularized Iran. One study found that only 32% of respondents explicitly identified as Shia Muslims, in contrast to the monolithic depiction of Iran as a Shia nation.[143] While 90% of respondents described themselves as hailing from religious families, 47% reported losing some religious focus within their lifetime. Over 60% admitted to not performing the daily Muslim prayers, and 60% said that they did not observe the fast of Ramadan.[144]

In light of these conditions, one can gain a greater appreciation for the seeming urgency in which Iran has approached the question of sanctions relief in 2021. While a traditional realist analysis of sanctions does capture the economic pressure that sanctions engender, the inner workings of the Iranian regime might be obfuscated by the system-centric level of analysis. Yet, in the case of Iran, the desire for economic relief and international inclusion is strong at the grassroots, which adds additional pressure in favor of cutting a deal.

Section 5: Crafting a Nuclear Deal

As demonstrated thus far, the United States possesses ample leverage at this juncture to secure a beneficial deal with Iran. The negotiating strategy that was undertaken to achieve the JCPOA is a prime example of how a new deal should be achieved. Targeted, multilateral sanctions secured leverage over Iran, forcing Iranian leaders to come to the negotiating table. However, the JCPOA had numerous defects, with allowing uranium enrichment and permitting sunset provisions being the most notable. The United States, in negotiating a new deal with Iran, should not settle for the JCPOA. Instead, the United States comes to the negotiating table from a position of strength, with Iran having made the initial offer (resumption of the JCPOA). This section discusses how the United States should secure a better deal, using the analysis in the prior sections as the basis for a sanctions-driven carrot and stick strategy that secures leverage over Iran.

The first step is to ensure that the United States approaches the negotiations with leverage. For the most part, this step has already been attained. The Iranian economy is in shambles, protests are accelerating, and many of the activities undertaken by Iran in 2021 (such as the event surrounding the South Korean tanker) indicate that the regime knows it is in a state of emergency. U.S. policymakers need to approach negotiations with the awareness that Iran has made the first offer, and that Iran has less ability to wait the United States out than the converse—the United States is not in dire economic straits.

To ensure that leverage is held, existing United States sanctions need to be tightened to the greatest extent possible. Secondary sanctions have been a highly effective tool, ensuring that companies that deal with Iran are barred from much of the global financial system. This has resulted in foreign companies having to choose between business with the United States and business with Iran. While the existing sanctions are already quite onerous, further sanctions are possible. Over the past several years, a graduated approach to sanctions has been applied, with additional sanctions being slapped on oil, banking, and even individual officials in government.[145] The United States should continue these steps, formalizing them by subjecting sanctions to a defined schedule that gradually escalates them the longer that Iran continues to have a nuclear program that engages in uranium enrichment. This makes U.S. escalation predictable and knowable in advance. Demonstrating adherence to such an escalation ladder early on will convince Iran that attempting to wait out the United States is futile, increasing the incentive to cut a deal.

The second step is to approach U.S. allies about embarking on multilateral sanctions. This will admittedly be challenging, considering the degree to which the United States acted unilaterally in abrogating the JCPOA and resuming secondary sanctions without the blessings of the international community. However, the United States should approach transatlantic allies from the standpoint of wanting to build upon the JCPOA, using it as a framework for a stronger deal. As argued by Barbara Slavin, there may be appetite for the United States to work with European allies on reaching an interim agreement that addresses the nuclear issue with Iran.[146]

This will be a tough ask, and the United States will need to make the case to allies that a re-entry into the JCPOA is insufficient. As part of this, the United States will want to emphasize that the international security environment has changed notably since the JCPOA in 2015. Since then, Iran has carried out an increasingly destabilizing set of regional activities (particularly following the killing of Suleimani) and, most critically, is enriching uranium at an unacceptably high level. Officials from France, Germany, and the UK have acknowledged that enriching at 20% is the nuclear equivalent of crossing the Rubicon, arguing that this is “increasingly severe and non-reversible.”[147] This should be the major selling point for the United States. Enriching at 20% puts Iran dangerously close to weapons-grade enrichment. Allowing Iran to enrich at a lower level once the 20% threshold has been crossed (as a return to the JCPOA would permit) is unacceptable—the only recourse is to forbid enrichment altogether.

As a result, there may be appetite in Europe for a more stringent deal, even if public statements call for President Biden to return to the JCPOA. One unnamed European diplomat acknowledged that a return to the JCPOA is “probably not sufficient,” while EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell expressed deep concern about recent Iranian uranium enrichment.[148]

Achieving multilateral sanctions is ideal—both the traditional realist and the constructivist social perspectives on sanctions are in agreement about that fact. For the realists, multilateral sanctions ensure a unified front that minimizes defections and ensures that the targeted country cannot easily wait out the sanctioning country. For the constructivists, multilateral sanctions contribute to the perception that the sanctions are a true form of social shunning, a powerful force for a country that desires inclusion within the international arena. As such, the ideal mechanism would utilize the “snapback” sanctions at the UN Security Council, ensuring a multilateral coalition was present to enforce sanctions against Iran. Coupled with existing U.S. sanctions, this would apply considerable pressure. However, the perfect should not be made the enemy of the good. If multilateral sanctions cannot be attained, continuing to ratchet up U.S. secondary sanctions is the next best option. The dire straits that Iran’s economy is in since the resumption of unilateral sanctions demonstrates that those are quite effective, operating as the next-best option.

The third step is for the United States to clearly communicate to Iran a timeline as to how sanctions will gradually intensify, using the aforementioned “escalation ladder” of sanctions. This makes punitive steps undertaken by the United States eminently knowable. However, the United States should not offer only sticks; there must be a clearly defined carrot. Instead of a vague, punitive sanction that loosely is related to behavior, the United States should make clear what its demands are and what conditions are sufficient to lift the sanctions. The United States should emphasize that sanctions are strictly geared towards preventing the development of Iran’s nuclear program.

Critically, Iran should be offered some small relief early on. This will help demonstrate that the United States is negotiating in good faith and provide an easily attainable way for Iran to de-escalate the current crisis. Iran should first be offered a small amount for ceasing to reverse uranium at or above 20%, with relief being offered gradually as Iran enriches at a lower and lower level. There should also be a connection between the commencement of negotiations with U.S. officials and sanctions relief, offering Iran some small sanctions relief for agreeing to negotiate.

This calibrated, clear approach to sanctions is supported by the evidence. Sweeping behavioral sanctions without a clear end in sight offer no incentive to comply because the target state lacks a clear guarantee that a change in behavior will result in relief.[149] In contrast, a targeted approach with clear, actionable goals allows Iran to secure some gain by de-escalating. The fourth step is to begin negotiating with Iran on a new nuclear deal. Iran has expressed an interest in returning to the JCPOA, which is a good starting point for negotiations. However, the JCPOA had numerous flaws, and should not be accepted. The United States should instead make clear at the outset that there are three redlines that must be observed for any deal to be acceptable. First, there must be an instant moratorium on uranium enrichment above the level of 20%. Such enrichment runs a dangerously high risk of allowing Iran to get close to weapons-grade enrichment. Second, any final deal must not permit Iran to enrich at any level, among the completion of the deal. This will be explained at length in the subsequent paragraphs, but enrichment offers Iran a permission that is unprecedented. It erodes the sanctity of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and risks empowering other states to act rashly in the hopes of eventually securing a guarantee of enrichment. Third, the final deal must be extended permanently, without the use of the JCPOA’s sunset provisions. Such provisions run a high risk of Iran waiting for the expiration of the deal to break out and develop weapons in a destabilizing matter.

As part of this, the United States should enter with the realization that negotiating a new, landmark agreement will take time. Additionally, Iran has emphasized that they expect sanctions relief before returning to compliance with the JCPOA, risking an impasse.[150] One idea in the interim is a short-term “less for less” deal, where the United States provides limited sanctions relief in exchange for Iran scaling back its enrichment.[151] While this cannot and should not replace a broader set of negotiations, it offers both sides a benefit, ensuring that Iran gets limited sanctions relief while the United States ensures that Iran’s breakout time is less threatening.[152]

The fifth and final step for the United States to take is to hedge, ensuring that there are contingency plans in case the deal breaks down. To do so, the United States must emphasize that it views enrichment of uranium at or above 20% as a grave security threat and will respond accordingly. A decade ago, Iran approaching the 20% level almost resulted in an Israeli strike against Iranian facilities, and the United States should emphasize that the security imperative present then is equally present now.[153] If Iran refuses to abide by this moratorium, the United States should gradually escalate militarily, with the final and most severe step including an offensive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. If U.S. concerns are communicated clearly and credibly, Iran would likely abide by this moratorium and not risk a conflagration.

While these steps are necessary for maximizing leverage and attaining a deal, the question remains: what will the deal include? Building off of the framework of the JCPOA, the United States should insist on a new and improved version that substantially reduces the risk of proliferation in the medium- and long- term. According to Matthew Kroenig, the problem with the JCPOA is that it “only delays rather than stops Iran’s quest to develop nuclear weapons.”[154] The fundamental issue is that the JCPOA does not forbid uranium enrichment but allows it to continue at a low level. Kroenig argues this allows two paths to the bomb. The first is the “patient path,” due to the sunset clauses in the JCPOA.[155] After 15 years, Iran will be able to simply build a uranium enrichment program with no constraints. The second path is that Iran can reap the benefits of sanctions relief, grow its economy, and simply exit the agreement. While proponents of the deal claim that the United States can get tough with Iran after both of those scenarios, Kroenig argues that the United States will have lost its leverage at that point. Sanctions relief will have removed much of the economic pressure, while other countries will be reluctant to undo trade ties with Iran.[156]

The other core weakness of the JCPOA in addition to the sunset provisions is that it allows Iran the right to enrich. Beyond the risks that this creates for the sunset provisions, this is intrinsically dangerous. Kroenig notes that the United States has spent half a century working to prevent other countries from enriching. This was a de facto redline for U.S. non-proliferation policy.[157] In contrast, the JCPOA is an “international stamp of approval…setting a dangerous precedent.”[158]

However, these defects can be remedied by a “return to the pressure track” in the pursuit of a new, better deal.[159] Past experience has demonstrated that pressure and sanctions can, for many of the aforementioned reasons, achieve tangible results. Iran suspended uranium enrichment in 2003 among fears that the invasion of Iraq portended a threat to Iranian sovereignty; Iran also did accept a return to the negotiating table following onerous sanctions during the Obama administration.[160] Sanctions and pressure have not been the issue. Rather, “Washington erred…in letting up too early.”[161]

However, a successful deal also can offer Iran numerous benefits. The most obvious is sanctions relief, which can allow a return to economic success, similar to what happened following the JCPOA. However, it is possible for Iran to achieve the benefits of nuclear energy without uranium enrichment. Since the advent of the nuclear age, the United States has been stalwart in its commitment to helping other nations attain the benefits of nuclear energy, living up to Article IV of the NPT’s commitment to the “inalienable right…to develop research production and use of nuclear energy.”[162] The list of countries with “peaceful nuclear programs” (programs incapable of acquiring weapons-grade uranium or plutonium) is extensive. Countries such as Mexico, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, and more have vibrant nuclear energy programs without enriching uranium or reprocessing plutonium.[163] Instead, the United States allows these countries to operate light-water reactors while supplying these countries with nuclear fuel for reactors. The danger is for states to operate heavy-water reactors and produce their own nuclear fuel, which creates the proliferation risk: a state that can produce nuclear fuel for nuclear reactors can also make fuel for nuclear weapons.[164]

While such a deal may seem unlikely, it is vital to remember that the United States holds the leverage, and not Iran. Additionally, even unlikely deals can materialize. As noted by Kroenig, few would have predicted the suspension of enrichment in Libya in 2003, but it materialized suddenly, to the surprise of many.[165] Through sound negotiating tactics, an end to Iranian enrichment is possible.

However, tactful negotiations will be essential, recalling the constructivist insights that were discussed in Section 3. Iran approaches negotiations with the West not from the vantage point of a security-seeking actor but, like all countries, with interests that are deeply informed by its culture and history. Being mindful of this will be vital for effective negotiations. The United States should make sure that negotiations are reciprocal, with tit-for-tat responses that aim to create a feedback loop of positive engagement. Beyond the empirical and theoretical evidence discussed in Section 3, modern social science evidence vindicates such an approach. An analysis by Nicholas Wright and Karim Sadjadpour titled “The Neuroscience Guide to Negotiations with Iran” sought to explain Iran’s stances psychologically.[166] Wright and Sadjadpour quote the Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, lamenting that Iran is “being told that you cannot do what everyone else is doing” in being forbidden from having a nuclear program.[167] Recent psychological evidence has confirmed that perceived unfairness is among the most deeply ingrained and pervasive emotions that we feel, impeding our innate desires for accommodation. In fact, “[m]ore than three decades of lab experiments show that humans are prepared to reject unfairness even at substantial cost. This is based on our biology.”[168]

Wright and Sadjadpour use the example of the “ultimatum game” where an individual is given $10 and proposes a split with a second player (e.g., $9 for herself and $1 for the second person).[169] Despite the second player being given an offer for free money, studies find that the second player rejects offers involving less than 25% of the money around half the time.[170] To illustrate how innate this impulse is, Wright and Sadjadpour also give the example of a famous study involving non-human primates—when two monkeys are instructed to carry out a task and only one is rewarded, the other monkey throws a fit.[171]

Iran is no exception, and many of their behaviors can be viewed through this prism. For example, in 1951 Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh moved to nationalize the British-run Iranian Oil company, incurring tremendous economic costs and a British embargo for little economic upside.[172] An irrational economic decision, Iran likely undertook it to resist an inequitable profit-sharing arrangement. Similarly, Iran has taken on billions of dollars in economic losses under a sanctions regime in recent years for a nuclear energy program that could provide only a fraction of Iran’s energy needs, “debilitat[ing] its chief sources of income—oil and gas revenue—in order to pursue a project with little comparable payoff.”[173]As former Iran nuclear negotiator Hossein Mousavian noted, “the nuclear issue today for Iranians is not nuclear—it’s defending their integrity, independent identity against the pressure of the rest.”[174]

Moreover, unfairness is in the eye of the beholder, with parties frequently disagreeing on what constitutes an injustice. As Wright and Sadjadpour outline, both the United States and Iran view themselves as the wronged party[175]. To the United States, Iran is a sponsor of terror that has resulted in egregious wrongs toward U.S. forces in the Middle East. To Iran, the United States is a powerful hegemon that aims to crush the God-given duty of spreading Islam throughout the world, with Iran being the David to the West’s Goliath that persists in the face of military and economic pressure. In many ways, this represents a Hegelian tragedy: each side positions itself as the hero while simultaneously assuming the role of a villain from a different perspective.

As dire as the social science research may seem, there remains a way out. The best response when “both sides…feel they have a monopoly of fairness” is aiming to start a feedback effect of engagement and accommodation.[176] This is consistent with the conclusions in Section 3 about engagement with Iran and should form the basis for a U.S. negotiating strategy, using the principles of reciprocity, accommodation, and tit-for-tat positive responses. While studies have found that humans innately resent unfairness, other studies have found that this is not mutually exclusive with an innate desire for cooperation and accommodation. Wright and Sadjadpour note this in the context of a “trust game” where the first player is given money (e.g., $20) and can invest any portion of it (e.g., $10) with the second player.[177] The investment immediately triples, and the second player can decide how much of the money to repay. Scientists found a remarkable result—when cooperation breaks down with investments declining, individuals would “build cooperation by making unilateral conciliatory gestures in the form of high repayments – despite the risk that these generous overtures will simply be pocketed and not reciprocated.”[178]

This may have an analogue in the case of U.S.-Iran relations. Some analysts perceived the election of moderate Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as the Iranian gesture of accommodation, following the hostility of President Mahmoud Ahmadeinjad.[179] Unilateral gestures of accommodation are salient and can trigger a positive feedback effect that creates further forms of engagement. When undertaken at an unexpected time, these can be powerful images of conciliation. There exist many examples of this strategy. In 1977, Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat made a surprise address to the Israeli Knesset, a dramatic peace overture to great effect.[180] In 2009, President Obama released a surprise video message to the people of Iran and wrote multiple private letters to Ayatollah Khamenei, which “impressed upon the Iranian public that America was interested in turning the page.”[181] Years later, this was followed by an unexpected phone call between Presidents Rouhani and Obama, resulting in the overture being reciprocated with engagement.

This lends itself well to the negotiating approach sketched in this section. President Trump, by withdrawing from the JCPOA, has set the United States on the pressure track with regards to U.S.-Iran policy. President Biden should not let his foot off the gas, maintaining the pressure. However, President Biden does have the opportunity to make overtures to Iran while simultaneously applying pressure. This juxtaposition of pressure with engagement will make any overture unexpected and, if the neuroscientific is correct, all the more effective. Coupled with careful, calibrated sanctions that offer Iran a clear path to relief, Iran will find a deal all the more effective. Additionally, as Wright and Sadjadpour stress, mutual understanding and empathy is vital to overcoming the distrust created by perceived unfairness.[182] The United States has an opportunity to express in negotiations understanding and empathy for some of the objectives that Iran has, emphasizing that it understands the inalienable right that Iran has to nuclear energy and its desire to meet Iran in the middle on a peaceful nuclear program. Negotiators should also skillfully frame any negotiations as a recognition of the regional and global significance that Iran now has. As mentioned in Section 3, prestige and a desire for international influence is a powerful driver for Iranian behavior and may supersede pure security maximization. Approaching negotiations with that in mind can ensure a positive spin on negotiations, making Iran more prone to engagement. 

Conclusion

Contemporary debates over sanctions, including toward Iran, suffer from a critical flaw—they falsely presume that a tool of economic warfare can solely have economic significance. This has led to a paradox. Despite convincing evidence that sanctions are not effective, sanctions have been inexplicably effective at achieving U.S. objectives with Iran, under particular conditions. This paper aims to situate the sanctions debate within a new context, arguing that sanctions should be seen through a constructivist lens that considers their signification for the target country. From such a perspective, sanctions serve a useful isolating function, creating costs for Iran that fall outside of the typical realist frame. Coupled with recent social science on negotiating, this creates the basis for an effective strategy towards Iran: a dual-track approach of pressure and engagement, using sanctions to secure a superior alternative to the JCPOA that relegates Iran’s proliferation ambitions to the dustbin of the 20^th century.

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Mackey, Sandra The Iranians: Persia, Islam and the Soul of a Nation, New York: Dutton, c1996. p. 184

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NPR, “Obama Makes Overtures To Iran In Video Message,” NPR, March 20, 2009, https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102156925

O’Toole, Brian “Sanctions are effective – if used correctly,” New Atlanticist, November 4, 2019, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/sanctions-are-effective-if-used-correctly/

Pape, Robert A.  “Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work,” International Security, Vol. 22, No. 2, (Fall 1997), 90-93, https://doi.org/10.2307/2539368

Pape, Robert A.  “Why Economic Sanctions Still Do Not Work,” International Security, Vol. 23, No. 1, (Summer 1998), 66-69, https://doi.org/10.2307/2539263

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Santora, Marc “Iran Increases Uranium Enrichment at Key Nuclear Facility,” The New York Ties, January 4, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/04/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-uranium-enrichment.html

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Walt, Stephen M., “The Difference Between Realists and Liberals,” Foreign Policy, July 11, 2013, https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/11/the-difference-between-realists-and-liberals/

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Yoon, Yesun “Assessment of the Effectiveness of Economic Sanctions: The Case of Iran, North Korea, Myanmar, and Cuba,” Naval Postgraduate School, June 2017, 16-22, https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/1046592.pdf

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References

[1] The White House, “The Historic Deal that Will Prevent Iran from Acquiring a Nuclear Weapon,” The White House, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/issues/foreign-policy/iran-deal

[2] Ibid

[3] Agence France-Presse, “Key Trump Quotes On US Withdrawal From Iran Nuclear Deal,” NDTV, May 9, 2018, https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/key-trump-quotes-on-us-withdrawal-from-iran-nuclear-deal-1849334

[4] Ibid

[5] Ibid

[6] Crowley, Michael, Falih Hassan, and Eric Schmitt, “U.S. Strike in Iraq Kills Qassim Suleimani, Commander of Iranian Forces,” The New York Times, January 2, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/02/world/middleeast/qassem-soleimani-iraq-iran-attack.html

[7] Ibid

[8] Ibid

[9] Wright, Nicholas, and Karim Sadjadpour, “What Neuroscience Can Teach Us About Making a Deal With Iran,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 14, 2014, https://carnegieendowment.org/2014/01/14/what-neuroscience-can-teach-us-about-making-deal-with-iran-pub-54191

[10] Ibid

[11] Ibid

[12] NPR, “Obama Makes Overtures To Iran In Video Message,” NPR, March 20, 2009, https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102156925

[13] NPR, “Obama Makes Overtures To Iran In Video Message,” NPR, March 20, 2009, https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102156925

[14] The White House, “The Historic Deal that Will Prevent Iran from Acquiring a Nuclear Weapon,” The White House, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/issues/foreign-policy/iran-deal

[15] Haltiwanger, John “Here’s what’s in the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that Trump abandoned and Biden pledged to restore,” Business Insider, December 2, 2020, https://www.businessinsider.com/iran-nuclear-deal-explained

[16] Gambrell, Jon, and Isabel Debre, “Iran starts 20% uranium enrichment, seizes South Korean ship,” Associated Press News, January 4, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/iran-uranium-enrichment-20-percent-ab0930064c446114506b8d085941cf84

[17] Haltiwanger, John “Here’s what’s in the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that Trump abandoned and Biden pledged to restore,” Business Insider, December 2, 2020, https://www.businessinsider.com/iran-nuclear-deal-explained

[18] The White House, “The Historic Deal that Will Prevent Iran from Acquiring a Nuclear Weapon,” The White House, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/issues/foreign-policy/iran-deal

[19] Haltiwanger, John “Here’s what’s in the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that Trump abandoned and Biden pledged to restore,” Business Insider, December 2, 2020, https://www.businessinsider.com/iran-nuclear-deal-explained

[20] The White House, “The Historic Deal that Will Prevent Iran from Acquiring a Nuclear Weapon,” The White House, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/issues/foreign-policy/iran-deal

[21] Robinson, Kali “What Is the Iran Nuclear Deal,” Council on Foreign Relations, January 4, 2021, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-iran-nuclear-deal

[22] Kroenig, Matthew “How to Unwind the Iran Nuclear Deal,” The American Interest, February 11, 2016, https://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/02/11/how-to-unwind-the-iran-nuclear-deal/

[23] Haltiwanger, John “Here’s what’s in the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that Trump abandoned and Biden pledged to restore,” Business Insider, December 2, 2020, https://www.businessinsider.com/iran-nuclear-deal-explained

[24] BBC News, “Trump on the Iran deal: ‘Worst, horrible, laughable,’ BBC News, April 26, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-41587428

[25] Haltiwanger, John “Here’s what’s in the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that Trump abandoned and Biden pledged to restore,” Business Insider, December 2, 2020, https://www.businessinsider.com/iran-nuclear-deal-explained

[26] Ibid

[27] Santora, Marc “Iran Increases Uranium Enrichment at Key Nuclear Facility,” The New York Ties, January 4, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/04/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-uranium-enrichment.html

[28] BBC News, “Six charts that show how hard US sanctions have hit Iran,” BBC News, December 9, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-48119109

[29] Ibid

[30] Ibid

[31] Jones, Seth G., and Danika Newlee, “Iran’s Protests and the Threat to Domestic Stability,” CSIS, November 2019, 1-2, https://www.csis.org/analysis/irans-protests-and-threat-domestic-stability

[32] Ibid

[33] Ibid

[34] Slavin, Barbara “FAST THINKING: What’s Iran thinking?” Atlantic Council, January 4, 2021, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/fastthinking/fast-thinking-whats-iran-thinking-uranium-enrichment-south-korea-tanker/

[35] De Luce, Dan “Iran tries to increase its leverage in future negotiations with President-elect Biden,” NBC News, January 5, 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/iran-tries-increase-its-leverage-future-negotiations-president-elect-biden-n1252833

[36] Slavin, Barbara “FAST THINKING: What’s Iran thinking?” Atlantic Council, January 4, 2021, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/fastthinking/fast-thinking-whats-iran-thinking-uranium-enrichment-south-korea-tanker/

[37] Ibid

[38] Kumar Sen, Ashish “A Brief History of Sanctions on Iran,” New Atlanticist, May 8, 2018, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/a-brief-history-of-sanctions-on-iran/

[39] Ibid

[40] Ibid

[41] Ibid

[42] Ibid

[43] Kumar Sen, Ashish“A Brief History of Sanctions on Iran,” New Atlanticist, May 8, 2018, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/a-brief-history-of-sanctions-on-iran/

[44] Brzoska, Michael“The Power and Consequences of International Sanctions,” May 19, 2014, https://www.e-ir.info/2014/05/19/the-power-and-consequences-of-international-sanctions/

[45] Ibid

[46] Clyde Hufbauer, Gary, Jeffrey J. Schott, Kimberly Ann Elliott, Barbara Oegg, “Economic Sanctions Reconsidered,” Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics, 3^rd edition,(2007), 155-160

[47] Pape, Robert A., “Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work,” International Security, Vol. 22, No. 2, (Fall 1997), 90-93, https://doi.org/10.2307/2539368

[48] Ibid

[49] Pape, Robert A., “Why Economic Sanctions Still Do Not Work,” International Security, Vol. 23, No. 1, (Summer 1998), 66-69, https://doi.org/10.2307/2539263

[50] Elliott, Kimberly Ann “The Sanctions Glass: Half Full or Completely Empty,” International Security, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Summer 1998), 50-52, https://doi.org/10.2307/2539262

[51] Ibid

[52] Brzoska, Michael “The Power and Consequences of International Sanctions,” May 19, 2014, https://www.e-ir.info/2014/05/19/the-power-and-consequences-of-international-sanctions/

[53] Kahler, Miles “Rationality in International Relations,” International Organization, Vol. 52, No. 4, (Autumn 1998), 919-920, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2601362

[54] Joseph, Jonathan “Realism and Neorealism in International Relations Theory,” The Encyclopedia of Political Thought, (September 2014), https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118474396.wbept0864

[55] Yoon, Yesun “Assessment of the Effectiveness of Economic Sanctions: The Case of Iran, North Korea, Myanmar, and Cuba,” Naval Postgraduate School, June 2017, 16-22, https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/1046592.pdf

[56] Ibid

[57] Yoon, Yessun “Assessment of the Effectiveness of Economic Sanctions: The Case of Iran, North Korea, Myanmar, and Cuba,” Naval Postgraduate School, June 2017, 16-22, https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/1046592.pdf

[58] Loyola, Mario “Obama Should Never Have Appeased Iran,” The Atlantic, January 12, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/obama-should-never-have-appeased-iran/604744/

[59] Jung, Euijin “Iran Sanctions: A Successful Episode,” Peterson Institute for International Economics, January 29, 2016, https://www.piie.com/blogs/trade-investment-policy-watch/iran-sanctions-successful-episode

[60] Ibid

[61] Ibid

[62] O’Toole, Brian “Sanctions are effective – if used correctly,” New Atlanticist, November 4, 2019, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/sanctions-are-effective-if-used-correctly/

[63] Ibid

[64] O’Toole, Brian “Sanctions are effective – if used correctly,” New Atlanticist, November 4, 2019, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/sanctions-are-effective-if-used-correctly/

[65] Mortlock, David, and Brian O’Toole, “US Sanctions: Using a Coercive Economic and Financial Tool Effectively,” Economic Sanctions Initiative, (November 2018), 6, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/US-Sanctions-Using-a-Coercive-Economic-and-Financial-Tool-Effectively1.pdf

[66] Ibid

[67] Dizaji, Sajjad F.“Do Sanctions Constrain Military Spending of Iran?” Defense and Peace Economics, (2019), 1-5, https://doi.org/10.1080/10242694.2019.1622059

[68] Macaluso, Agnese “The Apparent Success of Iran Sanctions,” The Hague Institute for Global Justice, Working Paper 2, (August 2014), 1-3, https://www.thehagueinstituteforglobaljustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Working-Paper-2-Iran-Sanctions_1409326879.pdf

[69] Macaluso, Agnese “The Apparent Success of Iran Sanctions,” The Hague Institute for Global Justice, Working Paper 2, (August 2014), 19, https://www.thehagueinstituteforglobaljustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Working-Paper-2-Iran-Sanctions_1409326879.pdf

[70] Brzoska, Michael “The Power and Consequences of International Sanctions,” May 19, 2014, https://www.e-ir.info/2014/05/19/the-power-and-consequences-of-international-sanctions/

[71] Brzoska, Michael “The Power and Consequences of International Sanctions,” May 19, 2014, https://www.e-ir.info/2014/05/19/the-power-and-consequences-of-international-sanctions/

[72] Ibid

[73] Ibid

[74] Ibid

[75] Walt, Stephen M.  “The Difference Between Realists and Liberals,” Foreign Policy, July 11, 2013, https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/11/the-difference-between-realists-and-liberals/

[76] Theys, Sarina “Introducing Constructivism in International Relations Theory,” February 23, 2018,

Introducing Constructivism in International Relations Theory

[77] Ibid

[78] Ibid

[79] Ibid

[80] This is the title of Alexander Wendt’s famous article on constructivism, published in 1992 by International Organization

[81] Theys, Sarina “Introducing Constructivism in International Relations Theory,” February 23, 2018, https://www.e-ir.info/2018/02/23/introducing-constructivism-in-international-relations-theory/

[82] Morris, Kate, and Timothy J. White, “Neutrality and the European Union: The case of Switzerland,” Journal of Law and Conflict Resolution, Vol. 3 (7), 104-111.

[83] Theys, Sarina “Introducing Constructivism in International Relations Theory,” February 23, 2018, https://www.e-ir.info/2018/02/23/introducing-constructivism-in-international-relations-theory/

[84] Ibid

[85] Tannewald, Nina “The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Normative Basis of Nuclear Non-Use,” International Organization, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Summer 1999), 433-468, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2601286

[86] Brzoska, Michael “The Power and Consequences of International Sanctions,” May 19, 2014, https://www.e-ir.info/2014/05/19/the-power-and-consequences-of-international-sanctions/

[87] Brzoska, Michael “The Power and Consequences of International Sanctions,” May 19, 2014, https://www.e-ir.info/2014/05/19/the-power-and-consequences-of-international-sanctions/

[88] Ibid

[89] Nia, Mahdi Mohammad “Title: A Holistic Constructivist Approach to Iran’s Foreign Policy,” International Journal of Business and Social Science, Vol. 2, No. 4, (March 2011), 279-280, http://ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol._2_No._4;_March_2011/31.pdf

[90] Nia, Mahdi Mohammad “Title: A Holistic Constructivist Approach to Iran’s Foreign Policy,” International Journal of Business and Social Science, Vol. 2, No. 4, (March 2011), 279-280, http://ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol._2_No._4;_March_2011/31.pdf

[91] Nia, Mahdi Mohammad “Title: A Holistic Constructivist Approach to Iran’s Foreign Policy,” International Journal of Business and Social Science, Vol. 2, No. 4, (March 2011), 283, http://ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol._2_No._4;_March_2011/31.pdf

[92] Ibid

[93] Ibid

[94] Nia, Mahdi Mohammad “Title: A Holistic Constructivist Approach to Iran’s Foreign Policy,” International Journal of Business and Social Science, Vol. 2, No. 4, (March 2011), 283 http://ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol._2_No._4;_March_2011/31.pdf

[95] Nia, Mahdi Mohammad “Title: A Holistic Constructivist Approach to Iran’s Foreign Policy,” International Journal of Business and Social Science, Vol. 2, No. 4, (March 2011), 283-284, http://ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol._2_No._4;_March_2011/31.pdf

[96] Ibid

[97] Ibid

[98] Ibid

[99] Nia, Mahdi Mohammad “Title: A Holistic Constructivist Approach to Iran’s Foreign Policy,” International Journal of Business and Social Science, Vol. 2, No. 4, (March 2011), 285, http://ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol._2_No._4;_March_2011/31.pdf

[100] Ibid

[101] Nia, Mahdi Mohammad “Title: A Holistic Constructivist Approach to Iran’s Foreign Policy,” International Journal of Business and Social Science, Vol. 2, No. 4, (March 2011), 285-287 http://ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol._2_No._4;_March_2011/31.pdf

[102] Nia, Mahdi Mohammad “Title: A Holistic Constructivist Approach to Iran’s Foreign Policy,” International Journal of Business and Social Science, Vol. 2, No. 4, (March 2011), 285-287, http://ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol._2_No._4;_March_2011/31.pdf

[103] Nia, Mahdi Mohammad “Title: A Holistic Constructivist Approach to Iran’s Foreign Policy,” International Journal of Business and Social Science, Vol. 2, No. 4, (March 2011), 287, http://ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol._2_No._4;_March_2011/31.pdf

[104] Nia, Mahdi Mohammad “Title: A Holistic Constructivist Approach to Iran’s Foreign Policy,” International Journal of Business and Social Science, Vol. 2, No. 4, (March 2011), 287-288, http://ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol._2_No._4;_March_2011/31.pdf

[105] Nia, Mahdi Mohammad “Title: A Holistic Constructivist Approach to Iran’s Foreign Policy,” International Journal of Business and Social Science, Vol. 2, No. 4, (March 2011), 288, http://ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol._2_No._4;_March_2011/31.pdf

[106] Ibid

[107] Ibid

[108] Ibid

[109] Nia, Mahdi Mohammad “Title: A Holistic Constructivist Approach to Iran’s Foreign Policy,” International Journal of Business and Social Science, Vol. 2, No. 4, (March 2011), 289, http://ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol._2_No._4;_March_2011/31.pdf

[110] Ibid

[111] Nia, Mahdi Mohammad “Title: A Holistic Constructivist Approach to Iran’s Foreign Policy,” International Journal of Business and Social Science, Vol. 2, No. 4, (March 2011), 290, http://ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol._2_No._4;_March_2011/31.pdf

[112] Ibid

[113] Nia, Mahdi Mohammad “Title: A Holistic Constructivist Approach to Iran’s Foreign Policy,” International Journal of Business and Social Science, Vol. 2, No. 4, (March 2011), 290, http://ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol._2_No._4;_March_2011/31.pdf

[114] Ibid

[115] Dizaji, Sajjad F.  “Do Sanctions Constrain Military Spending of Iran?” Defense and Peace Economics, (2019), 1-5, https://doi.org/10.1080/10242694.2019.1622059

[116] Kroenig, Matthew “How to Unwind the Iran Nuclear Deal,” The American Interest, February 11, 2016, https://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/02/11/how-to-unwind-the-iran-nuclear-deal/

[117] Shanda Consult, “Iran: 12.5% Economy Growth of Iran from 04/2016-03/2017,” Mondaq, August 7, 2017, https://www.mondaq.com/economic-analysis/616720/125-economy-growth-of-iran-from-042016–032017

[118] Yoon, Yesun “Assessment of the Effectiveness of Economic Sanctions: The Case of Iran, North Korea, Myanmar, and Cuba,” Naval Postgraduate School, June 2017, 7, https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/1046592.pdf

[119] Ibid

[120] Yoon, Yesun “Assessment of the Effectiveness of Economic Sanctions: The Case of Iran, North Korea, Myanmar, and Cuba,” Naval Postgraduate School, June 2017, 26-28, https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/1046592.pdf

[121] Fathollah-Nejad, Ali “Four decades later, did the Iranian revolution fulfill its promises?” Brookings Institute, July 11, 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/07/11/four-decades-later-did-the-iranian-revolution-fulfill-its-promises/

[122] Ibid

[123] Fathollah-Nejad, Ali “Four decades later, did the Iranian revolution fulfill its promises?” Brookings Institute, July 11, 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/07/11/four-decades-later-did-the-iranian-revolution-fulfill-its-promises/

[124] Ibid

[125] Ibid

[126] Jones, Seth G., and Danika Newlee, “Iran’s Protests and the Threat to Domestic Stability,” CSIS, November 2019, 2, https://www.csis.org/analysis/irans-protests-and-threat-domestic-stability

[127] Ibid

[128] Ibid

[129] Ibid

[130] Ibid

[131] Ibid

[132] Ibid

[133] Ibid

[134] Ibid

[135] Turak, Natasha“Iran is closer ‘than ever before’ to regime collapse, says former Obama security advisor,” CNBC, January 13, 2020, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/13/iran-is-closer-than-ever-before-to-regime-collapse-says-former-obama-security-adviser.html

[136] Ibid

[137] Jones, Seth G., and Danika Newlee, “Iran’s Protests and the Threat to Domestic Stability,” CSIS, November 2019, 1, https://www.csis.org/analysis/irans-protests-and-threat-domestic-stability

[138] Ibid

[139] Ibid

[140] Fathollah-Nejad, Ali, “Four decades later, did the Iranian revolution fulfill its promises?” Brookings Institute, July 11, 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/07/11/four-decades-later-did-the-iranian-revolution-fulfill-its-promises/

[141] Fathollah-Nejad, Ali, “Four decades later, did the Iranian revolution fulfill its promises?” Brookings Institute, July 11, 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/07/11/four-decades-later-did-the-iranian-revolution-fulfill-its-promises/

[142] Ibid

[143] Arab, Pooyan Tamimi, and Ammar Maleki, “Iran’s secular shift: new survey reveals huge changes in religious beliefs,” The Conversation, September 10, 2020, https://theconversation.com/irans-secular-shift-new-survey-reveals-huge-changes-in-religious-beliefs-145253

[144] Ibid

[145] Verma, Pranshu, and Farnaz Fassihi, “U.S. Imposes Sanctions on Iran’s Oil Sector,” The New York Times, October 26, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/world/middleeast/trump-sanctions-iran-oil.html?auth=login-email&login=email

[146] Geranmayeh, Ellie, Barbara Slavin, Sahil Shah, “Renewing Transatlantic Strategy on Iran,” Atlantic Council, (November 2020), 3, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Transatlantic-Strategy-Iran-IB.pdf

[147] BBC News, “Iran nuclear deal: Why do the limits on uranium enrichment matter?” BBC News, January 14, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-48776695

[148] Washington Post, “Europe sees a narrow window for Biden to revive Iran nuclear deal,” Washington Post, January 17, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/iran-nuclear-europe-biden/2021/01/16/b0e45352-54f1-11eb-acc5-92d2819a1ccb_story.html

[149] O’Toole, Brian, “Sanctions are effective – if used correctly,” New Atlanticist, November 4, 2019, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/sanctions-are-effective-if-used-correctly/

[150] Washington Post, “Opinion: Biden doesn’t need to rush back into the Iran nuclear deal,” Washington Post, January 19, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/19/biden-doesnt-need-rush-back-into-iran-nuclear-deal-defuse-tensions/

[151] Ibid

[152] Ibid

[153] Gambrell, Jon “Iran plans 20% uranium enrichment ‘as soon as possible,’” Associated Press News, January 1, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-dubai-iran-iran-nuclear-united-arab-emirates-384717b592f8a7012b02d8627f36763a

[154] Kroenig, Matthew “The Return to the Pressure Track: The Trump Administration and the Iran Nuclear Deal,” Diplomacy & Statecraft, Volume 29, Issue 1, (January 2018), 2, https://doi.org/10.1080/09592296.2017.1420529

[155] Ibid

[156] Ibid

[157] Kroenig, Matthew “The Return to the Pressure Track: The Trump Administration and the Iran Nuclear Deal,” Diplomacy & Statecraft, Volume 29, Issue 1, (January 2018), 3, https://doi.org/10.1080/09592296.2017.1420529

[158] Ibid

[159] Kroenig, Matthew “The Return to the Pressure Track: The Trump Administration and the Iran Nuclear Deal,” Diplomacy & Statecraft, Volume 29, Issue 1, (January 2018), 3-5, https://doi.org/10.1080/09592296.2017.1420529

[160] Kroenig, Matthew “The Return to the Pressure Track: The Trump Administration and the Iran Nuclear Deal,” Diplomacy & Statecraft, Volume 29, Issue 1, (January 2018), 6-8, https://doi.org/10.1080/09592296.2017.1420529

[161] Kroenig, Matthew “The Return to the Pressure Track: The Trump Administration and the Iran Nuclear Deal,” Diplomacy & Statecraft, Volume 29, Issue 1, (January 2018), 5, https://doi.org/10.1080/09592296.2017.1420529

[162] Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/npt/text

[163] Kroenig, Matthew “How to Unwind the Iran Nuclear Deal,” The American Interest, February 11, 2016, https://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/02/11/how-to-unwind-the-iran-nuclear-deal/

[164] Ibid

[165] Ibid

[166] Wright, Nicholas, and Karim Sadjadpour, “What Neuroscience Can Teach Us About Making a Deal With Iran,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 14, 2014, https://carnegieendowment.org/2014/01/14/what-neuroscience-can-teach-us-about-making-deal-with-iran-pub-54191

[167] Wright, Nicholas, and Karim Sadjadpour, “What Neuroscience Can Teach Us About Making a Deal With Iran,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 14, 2014, https://carnegieendowment.org/2014/01/14/what-neuroscience-can-teach-us-about-making-deal-with-iran-pub-54191

[168] Ibid

[169] Ibid

[170] Ibid

[171] Ibid

[172] Ibid

[173] Ibid

[174] Ibid

[175] Wright, Nicholas, and Karim Sadjadpour, “What Neuroscience Can Teach Us About Making a Deal With Iran,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 14, 2014, https://carnegieendowment.org/2014/01/14/what-neuroscience-can-teach-us-about-making-deal-with-iran-pub-54191

[176] Ibid

[177] Ibid

[178] Ibid

[179] Ibid

[180] Wright, Nicholas, and Karim Sadjadpour, “What Neuroscience Can Teach Us About Making a Deal With Iran,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 14, 2014, https://carnegieendowment.org/2014/01/14/what-neuroscience-can-teach-us-about-making-deal-with-iran-pub-54191

[181] Ibid

[182] Ibid

By no means was the Iran nuclear deal perfect, but it was progress. It bound a country that was labeled an “axis of evil” by the Bush administration to a negotiated agreement that benefited the United States and global security. [2] The ultimate goal of such a treaty was to limit Iran’s nuclear capacity, and through limits on plutonium stock, unhindered access to and full monitoring of nuclear sites, and expeditious access to requested records, the deal was a major step toward achieving that goal. It is fair to argue that it did not go far enough, but it was neither intended to be the ultimate and final nuclear agreement, nor did anything in its constitution discourage building upon its groundwork to extend it through further negotiations. [3] It was a refreshing win for diplomacy in a region rife with decades of treacheries. President Biden has called for a return to American decency and respect for facts, promises, and diplomacy. Honoring our commitment is consistent with and imperative to this political approach. [4] 

The JCPOA, implemented in 2015 by the Obama Administration and the other four permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom) plus Germany and the European Union, was an ambitious effort at an American-Iranian nuclear deal that involved and bound other world players. It was motivated by a recognition that Iran has preliminary nuclear weapons capability and has the potential to use their knowledge to produce and use nuclear weaponry. [5] In 2018, with overwhelming  evidence suggesting that Iran was still complying to the agreement, the United States unilaterally abandoned the agreement at the  bewildering and seemingly unprompted behest of the Trump Administration. [6] The United States subsequently levied crushing economic sanctions on the country with no clear goal, and never attempted to renegotiate new terms. [7] 

The JCPOA was not created to resolve the many real and serious conflicts between Iran and the rest of the world. It actually did not remove the entire set of existing sanctions against Iran, only those imposed in response to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The U.S. kept its sanctions pertaining to human rights, terrorism and missile activities, and —held—- the right to impose additional sanctions for non-nuclear issues. [8] The agreement was intended to focus only on nuclear issues–not to ignore the rest, but to remove the most critical issue in the short-run, and then build on its diplomatic foundation to address other problems, such as Iran’s tendency to cause political and military agitation in the region. Most notably, the JCPOA placed limits on Iran’s plutonium production and storage. Iran agreed to modify the development of reactors, effectively reducing plutonium levels, and to reduce the reprocessing of plutonium. The JCPOA also established strong limits preventing Iran from producing the materials necessary for nuclear action and called for permanent prohibition on certain weapons development. [9] This prohibition included certain restrictions on non-direct nuclear developments, such as those for civilian production of oil, or for other militaristic endeavors. Critically, the JCPOA put in place limits that allowed the international community time to respond in case Iran ever wanted to pursue a nuclear pathway. It created a 12 month breakout for response, roughly the time it would take Iran to build a nuclear weapon. [10] 

The JCPOA created a systematic and comprehensive international monitoring system for every level of Iran’s nuclear supply chain. Under the JCPOA, inspectors had access to all facilities that produce nuclear materials as well as to all extraneous locations that support production. These facilities were to be monitored in real time, and inspectors were given daily access into uranium enrichment facilities. Inspectors were even granted access to military sites, which Iran had to grant within 24 days after the initial request. [9] Through this monitoring system, any material infractions of the agreement would be quickly flagged and investigated. 

Opponents of the JCPOA often cite the inclusion of “sunset clauses,” or expiration dates on certain restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities, as a fatal shortcoming of the agreement. One of the most iterated elements of such concerns is that after 15 years, some limits on Iran’s uranium production (limit and stockpile) will expire. [11] However, a number of the monitoring mechanisms are permanent and will still act as considerable barriers to Iran if the state ever chooses to pursue nuclear weapons. [12] These sunset clauses are in fact a further reason to rejoin the JCPOA. Expedient reentry into the agreement would allow ample time to renegotiate these restrictions and to build upon the deal, thus extending the life of such restrictions.

In 2018, when President Trump withdrew from the JCPOA and implemented crippling sanctions in an attempt to restrict the Iranian government, he neglected to consider the wellbeing of the people. [13] The global focus tends to be on Iran’s external actions, while ignoring the fate of the Iranian population. The devastating reality of these crushing measures is that those most affected are not part of the regime or other leadership, but rather the eighty million Iranianian citizens. [14] Sanctions levied onto an already struggling country has pushed many Iranians below the poverty line,, and hardened the severity and frequency of unemployment. [15] 

In an effort to make up for lost funds, the Iranian government raised fuel prices by as much as 200 percent  in November 2019. [16] The one commodity that consumers could rely on became unattainable, which caused  Iran’s economy to collapse, inflation rates to rise well over 800 percent, and for recession to ravage the country. [17] To those who support Trump’s boycott of Iran, the sanctions were a success. But there is little evidence that it weakened the regime. When fuel prices rose, the Iranian people erupted in mass protest, fighting for the right to survive. The United Nations reported around 7,000 arrests and over 300 deaths from the protests. [18] The U.S. estimates 1,500 deaths. Amnesty International reported that nearly a year later more than 500 people involved in the protests were still being tracked down, tortured, jailed, or executed. [19] There is a level of moral hazard in the argument to make life painful for the population of a country in order to punish a government that a certain administration dislikes. 

 Pursuing nuclear weapons is the Iranian government’s desperate attempt at self-preservation while facing immense internal pressure. It is important to note that the JCPOA was the initiative of Iran’s moderates and was opposed by many influential conservatives. Its demise has also doomed the political fortunes of the reformers and emboldened the hardliners. Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, has stated that if he believed the US could efficiently come back to the JCPOA, he would have quickly rejoined. However, he has made it clear that, seeing as the return to the JCPOA is looking to be a slow process for the Biden Administration, he has no rush to expedite the process. The immense economic hardships and political inefficiency in Iran has created a sense of societal despondency, translating into political indifference. This has led to diminished faith in the political system, and the subsequent election of hardliners by a more extreme voting electorate. [20] If the economy starts to get better before the election, there will likely be higher political turnout in the polls, and the candidate chosen will be less extreme, much to Khomeini’s disadvantage. [21] 

 In May 2019, Iran began violating the rules of the JCPOA following the withdrawal from the agreement by the Trump Administration. Much of what Iran has done as of yet is reversible. However, Iran has plans to roll back monitoring mechanisms, which would create gaps in IAEA records and to begin the production of uranium metal. [22] The longer we wait to rejoin the JCPOA, the more difficult these measures will be to reverse. 

From the perspective of Iranian leadership, restoring the JCPOA is vital before considering deliberations about any other issue. [23] However, there is an opportunity to extract some concessions from Iran before a full restoration. As Iran is the weaker party in negotiations, but there is no incentive for them to negotiate against themselves. They can’t create the impression that the U.S. can sign deals, renege on them, and then try to extract more concessions. [24] 

Another critical angle in our relationship with Iran is Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is one of our closest allies in the region, as well as a prominent dissenter of Iran. There lies a certain level of irony, however, in the moral indistinction between Saudi Arabia, our stark ally, and Iran, our vehement enemy. Saudi Arabia has an appalling domestic human rights record; U.S. has declared its current de facto ruler and the heir to the kingdom’s throne to be a murderer; there are troubling signs of their support for Islamic exterimism, and their war in Yemen is a horrific genocide with a crushing toll on innocent civilians. [25] Yet, as a matter of realpolitik we need to continue our love-hate relationship with them. In order for us to be able to “manage” this relationship, we need to remove the existential threat of a nuclear Iran from the equation, and then try to deescalate the rivalry between the two countries that is hurting the interests of the U.S. in the region through destabilizing neighboring states.

While the structure of the 2015 nuclear deal is not yet so corroded, there is time for the new administration to renegotiate terms of reentry. Two years of full implementation of the JCPOA, from January 2016 to May 2018, showed both its effectiveness, and Iran’s willingness to be regulated by its terms. Iran could quickly and easily come back to compliance by removing centrifuges, reducing stockpiles, and halting uranium enrichment. [26] Restoring the JCPOA is still viable, and would help both U.S. national security interests, as well as international peacekeeping efforts. [27] 

The JCPOA was the first nuclear non-proliferation treaty that had the practical effect of obstructing another able country from entering the nuclear club. There is no realistic, good alternative to effectively curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Only once we’ve essentially reimplemented the JCPOA, could we then use that basework to further develop a new round of UN P5+1 nuclear negotiations. [28] For global security, for the future of peaceful negotiations, for relieving the suffering of tens of millions of innocent Iranians, and for restoring the value of an American promise, it is imperative that the Biden Administration work quickly to return to an Iranian nuclear deal. The City of Music may be just what is needed to unify the cacophony of voices towards a viable path forward. 

References

[1] David E. Sanger, Steven Erlanger, and Farnaz Fassihi, “U.S. and Iran Agree to Indirect Talks on Returning to Nuclear Deal,” The New York Times, April 2, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/02/world/europe/us-iran-nuclear-deal.html?campaign_id=60&emc=edit_na_20210402&instance_id=0&nl=breaking-news&ref=cta®i_id=95582531&segment_id=54754&user_id=e6d52a827364021645638f4ac3b47b72. 

[2] Andrew Glass, “President Bush cites ‘axis of evil,’ Jan. 29, 2002,” Politico, January 29, 2019, https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/29/bush-axis-of-evil-2002-1127725. 

[3] Kali Robinson, “What Is the Iran Nuclear Deal?” Council on Foreign Relations, January 4, 2021, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-iran-nuclear-deal.

[4] Associated Press, “Biden Urges Restoring Decency After ‘Assault’ on Democracy,” US News, January 6, 2021, https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2021-01-06/biden-calls-on-mob-to-pull-back-urges-restoring-decency.  

[5] “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,” July 14, 2015, https://2009-2017.state.gov/documents/organization/245317.pdf.

[6] Zach Beauchamp, “Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, explained,” Vox, May 8, 2018, https://www.vox.com/world/2018/5/8/17328520/iran-nuclear-deal-trump-withdraw.

[7] Julian Borger, Saeed Kamali Dehghan, and Oliver Holmes, “Iran deal: Trump breaks with European allies over ‘horrible, one-sided’ nuclear agreement,” The Guardian, May 9, 2018,  https://www.armscontrol.org/issue-briefs/2020-08/limits-breakout-estimates-assessing-irans-nuclear-program.

[8] “The Limits of Breakout Estimates in Assessing Iran’s Nuclear Program”, Arms Control Association, August 4, 2020, https://www.armscontrol.org/issue-briefs/2020-08/limits-breakout-estimates-assessing-irans-nuclear-program. 

[9] The Obama White House Archives, “The Iran Nuclear Deal: What You Need To Know About The JCPOA,” https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/docs/jcpoa_what_you_need_to_know.pdf.

[10] “The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) at a Glance,” Arms Control Association, March 2021, https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/JCPOA-at-a-glance. 

[11] “Iran nuclear deal: US ‘sunset clause’ concern remains – Tillerson,” BBC, September 21, 2017, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-41344366. 

[12] Ali Vaez, “The Iranian Nuclear Deal’s Sunset Clauses,” Foreign Affairs, October 3, 2017, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/iran/2017-10-03/iranian-nuclear-deals-sunset-clauses.

[13] “Six charts that show how hard US sanctions have hit Iran,” BBC, December 9, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-48119109.   

[14] Rick Noack, Armand Emamdjomeh, and Joe Fox, “How U.S. sanctions are paralyzing the Iranian economy,” The Washington Post, January 10, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/01/10/how-us-sanctions-are-paralyzing-iranian-economy/. 

[15]”Iran urges Biden to lift sanctions affecting medicines as it fights COVID-19,” The Jerusalem Post, January 26, 2021, https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/iran-urges-biden-to-lift-sanctions-affecting-medicines-as-it-fights-covid-19-656766. 

[16] Davide Barbuscia, “Iran recession to deepen, reserves to fall to $73 billion by March: IIF,” Reuters, January 15, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-economy-iif-idUSKBN1ZE139. 

[17] “10 Facts About The Recession In Iran,” The Borgen Project, July 26, 2019, https://borgenproject.org/10-facts-about-the-recession-in-iran/.   

[18] Michael Safi, “At least 7,000 people reportedly arrested in Iran protests, says UN,” The Guardian, December 6, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/06/at-least-7000-people-reportedly-arrested-in-iran-protests-says-un.

[19] Michael Safi, “Iranians tortured and jailed after mass protests, Amnesty says,” The Guardian, September 2, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/02/iran-iranians-tortured-and-jailed-after-mass-protests-amnesty-report-says 

[20] “Middle East Roundup: Biden Takes Steps Forward on JCPOA & What Iran’s Feb. 23rd Deadline Means,” NIAC Action, February 19, 2021, https://www.niacouncil.org/news/middle-east-roundup-biden-takes-steps-forward-on-jcpoa-iran-to-reduce-iaea-access/.

[21] John Defterios, “What impact will US sanctions on Iran actually have?” CNN, August 7, 2018, https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/06/middleeast/us-iran-sanctions-impact-intl/index.html 

[22] Natasha Turak, “Biden team takes a major step in offering to start talks with Iran as Tehran’s sanctions deadline approaches,” CNBC, February 19, 2021, https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/19/jcpoa-bidens-return-to-the-iran-nuclear-deal-is-getting-harder.html. 

[23] “US return to JCPOA meaningless without lifting sanctions: Iran’s UN Amb.” The Iran Project, February 20, 2021, https://theiranproject.com/blog/2021/02/20/us-return-to-jcpoa-meaningless-without-lifting-sanctions-irans-un-amb/. 

[24] “U.S. Should Lift Sanctions Practically Before Rejoining JCPOA,” Iran News Daily, February 14, 2021, https://irannewsdaily.com/2021/02/u-s-should-lift-sanctions-practically-before-rejoining-jcpoa/. 

[25] “Saudi Arabia: Events of 2019,” Human Rights Watch, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/saudi-arabia#.  

[26] Bahar Ghonsul, “Return to the JCPOA,” International Policy Digest, December 13, 2019, https://intpolicydigest.org/return-to-the-jcpoa/.

[27] IFP Editorial Staff, “Biden Should Return to JCPOA Not Only in Word, but in Deed: Iran,” Iran Front Page, January 2, 2021, https://ifpnews.com/biden-should-return-to-jcpoa-not-only-in-word-but-in-deed-iran. 

[28] “Iran Sanctions: JCPOA Basics,” OFAC Law Group, https://ofaclawyer.net/economic-sanctions-program/iran/jcpoa-basics/. 

Qasseem Soleimani

On Friday, January 3, 2020, missiles struck the Baghdad International Airport killing several people.^[1] Among those killed were Iranian General Soleimani, head of the Quds Force (QF) and his top Iraqi ally, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, head of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). This marks an escalation between longtime rival countries that have historically restricted their conflicts to covert operations and battles between proxies.

The QF is an elite subsection of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), analogous to a combination of the C.I.A and Special Forces. Control of QF made General Soleimani one of the most influential figures in the Middle East. He was a central figure in the Axis of Resistance that fought against the U.S. presence in the Middle East, and during his twenty-two years as head of the QF, Soleimani worked to further Iranian ambitions in the Middle East. He has orchestrated assassinations, armed allies, and trained militias that have killed thousands of Americans. ^[2] First rising to prominence during the Iran-Iraq war, Soleimani’s efforts against the West and Israel have earned him the adoration of many Iranians, including Ayatollah Khamenei who hailed Soleimani as “a living martyr of the revolution.” Recently, Soleimani has coordinated Iran’s efforts to aid Bashar Al-Assad’s forces against rebels and U.S. backed Syrian militias during the Syrian Civil War.^[3]  Despite a mutually antagonistic relationship, the U.S. has, at various points, formed uneasy partnerships with Soleimani to combat terrorist organizations. In the wake of 9/11, an alliance formed with the goal of combating the Taliban. Nearly a decade later, the QF backed Iraqi militia played an instrumental role in driving ISIS out of Iraq alongside U.S. forces.^[4] However, both of these partnerships collapsed soon after their formation due to U.S. and Iran’s conflicting interests in the Middle East.^[5]

The Strike

On December 27, rockets were fired at the Iraqi K1 military base in Kirkuk, killing Nawres Hamid, an Iraqi born U.S. citizen working as a civilian contractor who served as an interpreter.^[6] The missile strike also injured Iraqi and U.S. troops. The U.S. blamed Iranian backed Iraqi Militia group Kata’ib Hezbollah for the attack. Kata’ib Hezbollah is believed to have been behind similar strikes that have occurred over the past several months. In response, the U.S. launched an air strike that killed twenty-five Kata’ib Hezbollah militiamen and wounded dozens more. This air strike was widely condemned by Iraqi officials. In response, members of Kata’ib Hezbollah besieged the U.S. embassy and threatened to remain camped outside until the U.S. left Iraq. Kata’ib Hezbollah withdrew after less than twenty-four hours, stating that they had made a deal with the Iraqi Prime Minister to work through parliamentary means to expel U.S. troops.^[7] Iraqi frustration over the U.S. air strike was the likely reason why they offered little resistance when Kata’ib Hezbollah entered the Green Zone, where the U.S. embassy is located.  Kata’ib Hezbollah and the PMF they are legally a part of the Iraqi military. The U.S. attack that killed 25 Kata’ib Hezbollah soldiers as well as the strike that killed Muhandis were undertaken without Baghdad’s consent and are considered by many in Iraq as an breach of Iraqi sovereignty.^[8]

According to the Pentagon the strike was approved by the president on the grounds that “General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.”^[9]Congress was not notified of plans for the strike prior to its occurrence Reporting from Reuters lend some support the pentagon’s statement. According to Reuters Soleimani met with Iraqi Shi’ite militia allies in October to plan attacks on U.S. targets in Iraq. The goal was to goad the U.S. into military action that would turn Iraqi sentiment away from rising resentment of Iran. The implementation of these strikes would be overseen by Kata’ib Hezbollah a pro-Iranian militia founded by al-Muhandis. ^[10]

Leaders’ Responses

Iran’s response to the killing of Soleimani has been resolute and firey. In his first official reaction to the airstrike, the Ayatollah vowed that “a forceful revenge awaits the criminals who have his blood and the blood of the other martyrs last night on their hands”^[11]

Iran’s regional allies have stood by them rhetorically. Yemeni Houthis and Assad’s Syrian regime have both condemned the airstrike. Lebanese Hezbollah had the strongest response, with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah saying it was the duty of resistance fighters to seek “just retribution” against “the most evil criminals in the world.” On the other hand, U.S. allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia have been hesitant about supporting further U.S. action in the region. This may seem a confusing heel turn for leaders who have historically urged the U.S. to take a more aggressive stance towards Iran. However, Trump has long expressed the opinion that the U.S. is not responsible for its allies’ security and has demonstrated his lack of commitment to U.S. allies by refusing to respond to a 2019 Iranian attack on Saudi oil fields. It is likely that, worried about whether the U.S. will come to their aid, Middle Eastern U.S. allies are heeding the messaging of Iran. The IRGC has threatened that “U.S. allies who gave their bases to its [the U.S.] terrorist army that any territory that in any way becomes the starting point of hostile and aggressive acts against the Islamic Republic of Iran will be targeted.”^[12]

In the week following the killing of Soleimani, Trump spoke aggressively on twitter warning Iran against retaliating. On January 4, Trump tweeted that the U.S. had “Targeted 52 Iranian sites” to be “HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD” if Iran attacked American people or assets.^[13] When asked if he would follow orders to attack cultural sites, Acting Defense Secretary seemed unwilling to commit to such an attack saying “We will follow the laws of armed conflict.” ^[14] On January 5, Trump tweeted that if attacked any U.S. person or target, the U.S. would “strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner.”^[15]  According to Yale Law professor Oona Hathaway on twitter, Trump’s threat of a “disproportionate” response violates an international law requirement that “Any action taken in self-defense […] must be necessary and proportionate to the threat posed.”^[16]

In an interview with NPR on January 7, Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that “It [the Soleimani killing] amounts to war, and we will respond according to our own timing and choice.” A statement that aligns with the predictions of experts who believe that the real response from Iran is still forthcoming. He said that Iran’s response will be constrained by international law and criticized Trump’s January 4 statement that the U.S. would respond to an Iranian attack by attacking Iranian cultural sites.^[17] On January 7 Trump walked back this statement saying “I like to obey the law” in reference to accusations that targeting cultural sites would constitute a war crime.^[18]Zarif also criticized of U.S. sanctions saying “the secretary of state, of all people, has said if Iran wants its people to eat, it has to listen to the United States. […] Starvation is a crime against humanity, creating individual responsibility before the International Criminal Court.” When pressed on Iran’s practice of supplying weapons and training to groups that kill U.S. soldiers Zarif brought up the downing of Iran Air Flight 655 as well as criticizing the U.S. for its role in the wars in Afghanistan and in supplying the Saudi Forces in Yemen.^[19]

On January 6, Iraq parliament voted on a nonbinding resolution backed by the Prime Minister to seek the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. In response, President Trump has threatened Iraq with heavy sanctions, in addition to stating that Iraq would be forced to repay the U.S. the money spent on modernizing military bases. These threats run counter to U.S. policy of the past 17 years, which has been to attempt to rebuild Iraq following the 2003 Iraq War. In Iraq there is genuine worry, many Iraqis still remember the ruinous sanctions of the 1990s.^[20] Broad sanctions would also run the risk of forcing Iraq deeper into Iran’s orbit. ^[21] The day following the vote by the Iraqi parliament, a draft of a letter from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley, was leaked. The wording of the letter appeared to indicate that the U.S. would be withdrawing from Iraq.^[22] After the letter was leaked, General Milley quickly organized a press briefing to clarify that the U.S. was only repositioning troops.^[23] The office of the Iraqi Prime Minister has announced that if the letter was indeed a draft sent in error Washington must send another letter to clarify the situation. ^[24] On January 27, Pompeo told the Iraqi Prime Minister the U.S. was open to discussing its future in Iraq, potentially signaling a willingness to decrease U.S. presence in the country. ^[25]

The Consequences 

The death of Soleimani creates new uncertainties in the Middle East. It is likely that its effects will be felt for years to come. 

Experts warn that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq could have devastating consequences. The most obvious outcome of the U.S. leaving Iraq would be an expansion of Iranian influence in the country. This would by an undesirable outcome by many in Iraq who earlier in the year were protesting excessive foreign influence. A U.S. withdrawal could also have serious consequences for the entire region. The U.S. and NATO presence in Iraq has been a crucial component of the fight against ISIS. Were the U.S. to withdraw, it is likely that counterterrorism efforts that rely on U.S. training, funding and support would suffer.^[26]

Iran has broken from the JCPOA and has begun to take steps toward becoming a nuclear power. On January 5, Iran announced its intention to step away from the final limitations placed on it under the JCPOA deal. In its announcement, Iran made clear it would continue to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency and would be willing to return to JCPOA if the U.S. lifts sanctions.^[27]

Although several Iranian backed groups have vowed revenge for the U.S. strike, it is unlikely their response will be especially severe. Hezbollah, one of the groups closest to Soleimani has announced that they see the expulsion of the U.S. military from the Middle East as the ultimate goal and emphasized that their response will focused on the military not U.S. civilians. Currently, Hezbollah is focused on trying to form a government in Lebanon’s parliament and do not wish to become embroiled in a conflict that could destabilize their rule.^[28]

Immediately after the killing of Soleimani the U.S. acted to protect its people and interests in the Middle East. Early on January 3, U.S. time the State Department warned Americans attempting to leave the region citing “heightened tensions”. The Pentagon has ordered roughly 4,500 troops to the Middle East.^[29] Another 3,000 troops have been put on alert for future deployment.^[30]

Experts on the region have said it is unlikely the situation will devolve to a full war due to Iran’s reliance on asymmetrical warfare. Iran has a history of absorbing blows and retaliating months or years later with carefully calibrated strikes.^[31] “What’s more likely is sustained proxy attacks against U.S. interests/allies regionally and even globally,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert and senior fellow at the Carnegie Institute for International Peace, in a Twitter posting.^[32] Additionally, in America high public opposition (76% of the public) to war with Iran precludes its likelihood.^[33] It is also likely that Iran, a country with a history of advanced cyberwarfare will retaliate by striking at both civilian and military targets belonging to the U.S. and our allies.^[34]

If Iran does choose to retaliate through more indirect methods, it is likely the QF will be involved. It is, however, less likely that the killing of Soleimani will significantly impact the operation of the QF.  Evidence suggests that in a well-institutionalized organization, the availability of trained replacements means that setbacks suffered from the loss of a leader are minimized.^[35] This appears to be the case with the QF. Soleimani’s replacement, Brig. Gen. Ismail Qaai has served as the deputy commander of the QF since 1997 and is familiar with the force’s operations. According to experts familiar with the IRGC, Qaai is well-versed in the operations of QF and was likely selected to ensure continuity. Qaai is likely to continue the QF’s aggressive anti-U.S. posture as he has been previously linked to funding terrorist groups including Hezbollah since 2012. ^[36]

Iran’s public retaliation for the killing of Soleimani took place on January 7. That day, the Pentagon announced that Iranian missiles struck two Iraqi military bases, hosting US military and Coalition personnel. The statement from the Pentagon identified the two bases as Al-Asad and Erbil.^[37] In recent years, U.S. and Danish troops have been stationed at Al-Assad base and Erbil bas has been used as a special operations hub. Both bases have served as anchor points during the war against ISIS. The attack caused traumatic brain injuries in fifty US service members.^[38]In the wake of the attack on the two bases, Iranian officials offered contradictory messages. Zarif tweeted that Iran does not seek “Escalation or War” and that Iran had “concluded” its attacks against US forces.^[39] However, an IRGC release stated that that “The fierce revenge by the Revolutionary Guards has begun”. Another IRGC statement following the attack warned that “If America responds to these attacks there will be bigger attacks on the way.”^[40]Despite Iran’s bellicose statements, reporting suggests that Iraq and the U.S. were warned of the attack before it took place pointing to Iran’s desire to avoid the kind of casualties that would have led to a conventional war with the U.S.^[41] Despite conflicting messaging on the state of hostilities with the U.S. all Iranian officials have been consistent calling for the U.S.’s departure from the Middle East. 

The day following the Iranian strike, Trump made his first statement to the press since the killing of Soleimani. Trump began his statement by reiterating his commitment to ensuring that Iran never develops nuclear weapons. Trump announced the U.S. would place even larger sanctions on the Iranian regime. The sanctions Trump announced are largely symbolic, they target eight individuals as well as the Iranian metals and textiles industries however they will be taken as the latest example of Trump’s aggressive and uncompromising posture towards Iran. He also made clear his intention to seek increased NATO involvement in the region.^[42] This desire came as a surprise to those used to Trump’s prior vociferous denunciations of NATO. Trump ended his statement by signaling that “The United States is ready to embrace peace with all who seek it.”  However, the decision to increase sanctions is likely to lead to increased tensions between the two countries, as sanctions under the maximum pressure doctrine marked the beginning of the current escalation cycle.^[43] It is probable that Iranian aggression will increase the circumstances that led to these escalations earlier this year, and the killing of Soleimani has most definitely magnified Iranian rage.

Works Cited:

^[1] Crowley, Michael, Falih Hassan, and Eric Schmitt. “U.S. Strike in Iraq Kills Qassim Suleimani, Commander of Iranian Forces.” The New York Times. The New York Times, January 3, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/02/world/middleeast/qassem-soleimani-iraq-iran-attack.html.

^[2] Filkins, Dexter. “The Shadow Commander.” The New Yorker. The New Yorker, September 23, 2013. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/09/30/the-shadow-commander/amp.

^[3] Berger, Miriam. “Qasem Soleimani Helped Shape the Brutality of the Syrian War.” The Washington Post. WP Company, January 3, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/01/03/qasem-soleimani-helped-shape-brutality-syrian-war/.

^[4] Filkins, Dexter. “The Shadow Commander.” The New Yorker. The New Yorker, September 23, 2013. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/09/30/the-shadow-commander/amp.

^[5] Blake, Aaron. “Analysis | When the United States and Qasem Soleimani Worked Together.” The Washington Post. WP Company, January 3, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/01/03/when-united-states-qasem-soleimani-worked-together/.

^[6] Davis, Aaron. “Contractor Whose Death Trump Cited Was a Naturalized U.S. Citizen Born in Iraq.” The Washington Post. WP Company, January 8, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/contractor-whose-death-trump-cites-was-a-naturalized-us-citizen-born-in-iraq/2020/01/07/afa7e774-31ac-11ea-91fd-82d4e04a3fac_story.html#click=https://t.co/zdoSKClN7v.

^[7] Ostovar, Afshon. “Analysis | How Did the U.S. Get to the Brink of War with Iran?” The Washington Post. WP Company, January 3, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/01/03/how-did-us-get-brink-war-with-iran/.

^[8] “United States Killed Iraqi Military Official and Iraqi Military Personnel in the Two Recent Attacks.” Just Security, January 8, 2020. https://www.justsecurity.org/67917/united-states-killed-iraqi-military-official-and-iraqi-military-personnel-in-the-two-recent-attacks/.

^[9] “Newsroom – Releases.” U.S. Department of Defense. Accessed January 29, 2020. https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/releases/Article/2049534/.

^[10] “Inside the Plot by Iran’s Soleimani to Attack U.S. Forces in Iraq.” Reuters. Thomson Reuters, January 4, 2020. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-security-soleimani-insight/inside-the-plot-by-irans-soleimani-to-attack-u-s-forces-in-iraq-idUSKBN1Z301Z.

^[11] “The Killing of Gen. Qassim Suleimani: What We Know Since the U.S. Airstrike.” The New York Times. The New York Times, January 3, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/world/middleeast/iranian-general-qassem-soleimani-killed.html.

^[12] Toosi, Nahal. “Trump’s Mideast Allies Duck Iran Confrontation.” Trump’s Mideast allies duck Iran confrontation. POLITICO, January 9, 2020. https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/01/08/iran-gulf-trump-allies-096382?__twitter_impression=true.

^[13] Trump, Donald. Twitter Post. January 4, 2020, 5:52 PM. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1213593975732527112?s=20.

^[14] Starr, Barbara, Ryan Browne, and Paul LeBlanc. “Esper Contradicts Trump on Targeting Iran’s Cultural Sites.” CNN. Cable News Network, January 7, 2020. https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/06/politics/esper-iran-cultural-sites-trump/index.html.

^[15] Trump, Donald. Twitter Post. January 5, 2020, 3:35 PM. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1213919480574812160

^[16] Hathaway, Oona. Twitter Post. January 5, 2020, 3:47 PM. https://twitter.com/oonahathaway/status/1213924995086376964?s=09

^[17] “Transcript: NPR’s Full Interview With Iran’s Foreign Minister.” NPR. NPR, January 7, 2020. https://www.npr.org/2020/01/07/794175782/transcript-nprs-full-interview-with-iran-s-foreign-minister.

^[18] “Iran ‘Concludes’ Attacks, Foreign Minister Says.” The New York Times. The New York Times, January 7, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/world/middleeast/trump-iran.html.

^[19] “Transcript: NPR’s Full Interview With Iran’s Foreign Minister.” NPR. NPR, January 7, 2020. https://www.npr.org/2020/01/07/794175782/transcript-nprs-full-interview-with-iran-s-foreign-minister.

^[20] Salim, Mustafa. Twitter Post. January 6, 2020, 7:50 PM. https://twitter.com/Mustafa_salimb/status/1214167375626543105?s=09

^[21] Alamiri, Yasmeen, and Gretchen Frazee. “Why Trump’s Sanctions Threat Revives Painful Memories for Iraqis.” PBS. Public Broadcasting Service, January 9, 2020. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/why-trumps-sanctions-threat-revives-painful-memories-for-iraqis.

^[22] Tapper, Jake. Twitter Post. January 6, 2020, 4:49 PM. https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1214297917114200064?s=09

^[23] Cooper, Helene, and Alissa J. Rubin. “The U.S. Seemed to Be Leaving Iraq. But It Was All an ‘Honest Mistake.’.” The New York Times. The New York Times, January 6, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/world/middleeast/iran-letter-withdrawal-iraq.html.

^[24] “Iraq Has Received U.S. Letter Regarding Troop Withdrawal: PM.” Reuters. Thomson Reuters, January 7, 2020. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-security-pm/iraq-has-received-u-s-letter-regarding-troop-withdrawal-pm-idUSKBN1Z625A.

^[25] “Secretary Pompeo’s Call with Iraqi Prime Minister Abd Al-Mahdi – United States Department of State.” U.S. Department of State. U.S. Department of State. Accessed January 29, 2020. https://www.state.gov/secretary-pompeos-call-with-iraqi-prime-minister-abd-al-mahdi/.

^[26]  Noack, Rick. “Analysis | Here’s What Might Happen If the U.S. Were to Suddenly Quit Iraq.” The Washington Post. WP Company, January 10, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/01/09/heres-what-might-happen-if-us-were-suddenly-quit-iraq/.

^[27] Rubin, Alissa J., Ben Hubbard, Farnaz Fassihi, and Steven Erlanger. “Iran Ends Nuclear Limits as Killing of Iranian General Upends Mideast.” The New York Times. The New York Times, January 5, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/05/world/middleeast/iran-general-soleimani-iraq.html.

^[28] Liz Sly, Sarah Dadouch. “Hezbollah Says Retribution for Soleimani’s Death Must Target U.S. Military, Not Civilians.” The Washington Post. WP Company, January 5, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/hezbollah-says-retribution-for-soleimanis-death-must-target-us-military-not-civilians/2020/01/05/50869828-2e62-11ea-bffe-020c88b3f120_story.html#click=https://t.co/2gd4Od9RRr.

^[29] Gibbons-neff, Thomas. “How U.S. Troops Are Preparing for the Worst in the Middle East.” The New York Times. The New York Times, January 6, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/world/middleeast/troops-iran-iraq.html.

^[30] Berger, Miriam, and Washington Post. “US Troops Are Stationed across the Middle East and Now Could Be a Target.” Stars and Stripes. Accessed January 29, 2020. https://www.stripes.com/news/middle-east/us-troops-are-stationed-across-the-middle-east-and-now-could-be-a-target-1.613609.

^[31] Maloney, Suzanne. “Perspective | Iran Knows How to Bide Its Time. Don’t Expect Immediate Retaliation for Soleimani.” The Washington Post. WP Company, January 3, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/01/03/iran-knows-how-bide-its-time-dont-expect-immediate-retaliation-soleimani/.

^[32] Sadjadpour, Karim. Twitter Post. January 3, 2020, 1:16 PM. https://twitter.com/ksadjadpour/status/1213162227542495238?s=09

^[33] Telhami, Shibley. “The U.S. Public Still Doesn’t Want War With Iran.” Foreign Policy, January 3, 2020. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/03/killing-suleimani-iran-tension-trump-fault/.

^[34] Tony Romm, Isaac Stanley-Becker. “’A Cyberattack Should Be Expected’: U.S. Strike on Iranian Leader Sparks Fears of Major Digital Disruption.” The Washington Post. WP Company, January 6, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/03/cyber-attack-should-be-expected-us-strike-iranian-leader-sparks-fears-major-digital-disruption/#click=https://t.co/TNVdSI8FbM.

^[35] Long, Austin. “Assessing the Success of Leadership Targeting.” Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, November 15, 2017. https://ctc.usma.edu/assessing-the-success-of-leadership-targeting/.

^[36] “The Killing of Gen. Qassim Suleimani: What We Know Since the U.S. Airstrike.” The New York Times. The New York Times, January 3, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/world/middleeast/iranian-general-qassem-soleimani-killed.html.

^[37] “DOD Statement on Iranian Ballistic Missile Attacks in Iraq.” U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE. Accessed January 29, 2020. https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Releases/Release/Article/2052103/dod-statement-on-iranian-ballistic-missile-attacks-in-iraq/.

^[38]  Starr, Barbara. “First on CNN: 50 US Service Members Diagnosed with Traumatic Brain Injuries after Iranian Missile Strike.” CNN. Cable News Network, January 28, 2020. https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/28/politics/50-injuries-iran-strike/index.html.

^[39] Zarif, Javad. Twitter Post. January 7, 2020, 9:32 PM. https://twitter.com/JZarif/status/1214736614217469953

^[40] “Iran ‘Concludes’ Attacks, Foreign Minister Says.” The New York Times. The New York Times, January 7, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/world/middleeast/trump-iran.html.

^[41] Ayash, Kamal, and John Davison. “Hours of Forewarning Saved U.S., Iraqi Lives from Iran’s Missile Attack.” Reuters. Thomson Reuters, January 14, 2020. https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1ZC218.

^[42] Blake, Aaron. “Analysis | Transcript of Trump’s Iran Speech, Annotated.” The Washington Post. WP Company, January 8, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/01/08/transcript-trumps-iran-speech/.

^[43] Ibid.

This paper argues that the social tensions in Iranian society during the Constitutional Revolution reveal that Iranian nationalism was not solely a product of the European influences that instigated the revolution. As reflected by the ways in which new ideas entered and were debated in Iranian society, the methods of dissent used against the Shah, and the mobilization of underlying alliances, Iranian nationalism came out of the process of adapting contexts and value systems particular to Iran, to European structures of political organization. Thus, Benedict Anderson’s proposal in his Imagined Communities text, that “nationalism has to be understood by aligning it … with the large cultural systems that preceded it,” in particular, “the religious community and the dynastic realm,” as the “key elements in their decomposition,” created nationalism^[1] is at odds with Iranian nationalism in the early 20^th century: the process of struggle and debate between and against the two elements Anderson posits as declining ultimately shaped Iranian nationalism. 

Traditional historiography of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution has tended to focus on the Iranian intelligentsia, and has treated European penetration as the primary instigator of the modernization project.^[2] As this approach does not consider the unique interests and visions of an expanse of diverse social groups, subsequent approaches have attempted to either understand the Iranian Revolution in the context of other contemporary revolutions, with an emphasis on the “cross-fertilization” of ideas, or have examined the perspective of specific social groups, such as women and artisans.^[3]These approaches tend to focus more on points of agreement, and consequently sideline the shifting and contradiction-ridden dynamic of interests and visions for Iran’s future. This paper thus analyzes these social tensions, to provide insight into the competing ideas that soon comprised the resulting constitutional institutions.

While individual rights were an ambiguous concept, they did exist in the religious realm, particularly in the idea that the people “had the right to expect justice.”^[4] The need to define these rights became pressing after the shah made several economic concessions, increased taxes, and publicly punished prominent merchants in 1905.^[5] There was now strong agreement that the “unwritten ‘Qajar Pact’—the normative system of elaborate negotiations between the center and different segments of society”—had been violated, and in order for justice to be reinstated, the monarchy, as the perpetuator of the initial injustice, would have to be limited. 

The ulama had been loyal to the shahs since the sixteenth century purely because the shahs protected Twelver Shiism, the geographic entity of Iran, and the interests of the people and the nation, an action which was seen as part of protecting Shiism.^[6] The shah had full control of the treasury, the army, and the appointment of officials and advisors, but as his divine mandate was rooted in Shiism, he was expected to abide by the ulama’s interpretation of the law and maintain “good governance.”^[7] Failure to comply, according to the Shiite tradition of dissent, would give the people the right to replace the shah.^[8]

British and French imperialism throughout the nineteenth century compromised Iran’s territorial sovereignty and ostracized the merchant class and ulama. The shah was left “a prisoner of imperial interests.”^[9] As a result, the shah’s infractions had begun to weather religious legitimation for the shahs’ rule. In this way, political ideas existing prior to the revolution served as the framework through which the primary grievances of “arbitrary rule, lack of accountability, inefficiency and general oppression” were understood.^[10] These existing ideas thus played a critical role in spurring discontent in the nineteenth century, and served as an impetus for discussions on the need for modernization.^[11]

The Iranian rowshanfekr, or intelligentsia, were a diverse group who actively sought modernization, limitations on the shah’s arbitrary rule, protection from European imperialism, and a vision for Iran inspired by secularism and European political ideas (such as individual rights).^[12] Their view of needing to curb the ulama’s position was paradoxically based on both secular Enlightenment ideas and the Iranian Shiite tradition of dissent.^[13] Even their understanding of the parliamentary system in Europe was a response to European encroachment; although they kept the European “tradition of reacting to domestic autocracy,” they also saw a parliament as a tool to counteract foreign imperialism.^[14]

The ulama, on the other hand, became divided: one faction saw constitutionalism and individual rights as compatible with, and even reinforcing shari‘a,^[15] while the other view it as “a direct threat to Islamic law.”^[16] Among the leading pro-constitutionalist ulama was Mohammad-Hosayn Nāini, who, in his 1909 treatise Awakening the Community and Purifying the Nation, countered the conservative view that a constitution would be a “heretical innovation” by framing it as an example of ijtihad, or the “Islamic ‘rational’ approach”, which allows human reasoning to take precedent in law.^[17] The main contention was not with adopting foreign concepts. Even as critical ideas of shura, or consultation, ‘adalat, or justice, and responsibility to the law were evident in both constitutionalism and shari‘a, the new issue was the degree to which the law being followed was Islamic law. In other words, the similarities of the European and Iranian systems created questions around which of the two identities took precedence in Iranian society.^[18] This contention regarding how to effectively merge Iranian and European value systems became the basis for the power struggle between the ulama and secular reformers.^[19] This struggle is critical because it is a direct reflection of a deep dichotomy between Iranian and European societies. Given the deep entrenchment of religion in Iranian society, the concept of secularism was only understood by a few senior bureaucrats, radical activists, and the well-traveled elite of the mercantile and intelligentsia. Constitutionalism was seen by most as “part of a Shi‘a culture and identity” and not as “a secular goal”. –Thus, only a small group of the secular and religious intelligentsia anticipated the tensions that would soon develop, and live in the political structures created by the revolution.^[20]

Initially, many constitutionalists saw the ulama as an ally, particularly because of their deeply entrenched role in Iranian society,^[21] and because of their ability to serve as a check^[22] on the powers of the Shah. The shari‘a was meant to hold the shah accountable, and thus, by coexisting with constitutionalism, was one of the ways in which Iranian religious values were being adapted into a European framework.^[23] While the later secular intelligentsia hoped to diminish the role of the ulama in society, this was not an option. The significance of Islam and the ulama to the Iranian identity meant that ideas of liberty, individuality and justice would not be accepted by Iranian society if it meant relegating Shiism.^[24]

Two of the most critical documents written during this time frame were the Fundamental Laws of 1906 and the Supplementary Fundamental Laws of 1907.^[25] The former was the first version of the new Iranian constitution, and the latter built on the Fundamental Laws by addressing some missing elements, such as provisions for individual rights. As the Fundamental Laws were hastily written (largely due to Muzaffar al-Din Shah’s imminent death), the primary goal was to place limits on the shah’s authority.^[26] They thus created the Majles—an independent governmental body that had financial authority over foreign transactions and the budget, as well as the ability to hold the shah’s ministers accountable. This effectively transferred some of the shah’s power to the legislature^[27] to limit further foreign concessions by future shahs.^[28] The Supplementary Fundamental Laws of 1907 reduced the powers of the shah further, created three branches of government, and included an 18-point bill of rights.^[29] Once limits were set on the shah’s powers through the first document, the tensions between the religious and secular interpretations of constitutionalism and the Majles^[30] came out into the open. The ulama, led by Sheikh Fazlullah Nuri, sought to increase their influence, while the reformist bureaucrats^[31] sought to use social reforms, particularly in education, to reduce the influence of the ulama.^[32] The resulting contradiction-ridden second document simultaneously established civil rights and popular sovereignty while including a compromise that institutionalized the ulama’s authority, and increased their influence to an unprecedented degree.^[33]

The writing of the Supplementary Fundamental Laws of 1907 reflected critical considerations on the part of constitutionalists on how to incorporate European political structures into Iranian society in a way that complemented existing Iranian value systems. While the 1831 Belgian Constitution was used as a model for administrative structures and the outlining of civil rights, it came with complications as it intentionally diminished the powers of the Catholic Church.^[34] Hence, the constitutionalists also drew on the Bulgarian and Ottoman constitutions, which established state religions, to keep Shiism a part of Iranian state structures: sovereignty was granted to the shah “as a trust confided” by the people, in Article 35.^[35] Although sovereignty was thus given to the people, the ulama in Article 2 had the right to ensure that the Majles remained in accordance with the shari‘a – which essentially decreased the authority of both the legislative and judicial structures.^[36]

The critical difference between the European and Iranian conceptions of constitutional monarchy is that the goal of Iranian reformers was neither to eliminate the position of the shah^[37] nor to establish representative institutions. Instead, the Iranian reformers sought to create structures that would allow the state to modernize, such as protecting against arbitrary rule, stabilizing the state of Iranian finances, and increasing bureaucracy.^[38] This goal, and the fact that major contradictions in the core of Iranian identity were allowed to exist side-by-side in the Supplementary Fundamental Laws, reveal an important, underlying element of the Constitutional Revolution: although civil rights were important to reformers, the “protection of the rights of the nation” were of preeminent importance.^[39] In this context, the Supplementary Fundamental Law was an attempt at top-down identity reform to strengthen the state. This is particularly evident in the Press Law of the Supplementary Fundamental Law, which provided greater protections for journalists and allowed for increased debate at all societal levels about what constituted Iranian nationalism, the Iranian identity, and the role of Islam.^[40] Over 200 new publications^[41] emerged during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, which allowed for “the creation of a common mind” and resulted in the mass-mobilization of Iranian society on the idea that state reform and modernization were the path to alleviate poverty and the weakness of the state.^[42]

Expression of discontent was in no way only restricted to those framing new guidelines for Iranian society. Opposition to the shah was expressed at all levels of society through various means: revolutionary poetry, shabnamehs, or night letters, and newspapers. These methods of dissent were a critical part of the Constitutional Revolution because they facilitated a discussion about how European ideas of constitutionalism should be incorporated into an Iranian context.^[43]For instance, the revolution changed how Iranians defined their relationship with the state, and these changes were reflected in Iranian poetry. Poetry had historically functioned as “the main vehicle … of literary and social expression, discharging sentiments, moralizing, disparaging, and lampooning,” and was now being used to understand nationalism, law, and freedom.^[44] Thus, folk poetry— colloquial, simple and facetious—suddenly became more popular than the “rigid, unrealistic and detached” Qajar high poetry.^[45] In this style, the poet Muhammad Taqi Bahar criticized one of the more repressive shahs of the constitutional era^[46] claiming, “To discuss freedom with the shah of Iran is a folly … Religion of the shah is not shared by any … If the shah of Iran cares not for justice, no wonder… To the eyes of a bat sunshine is agony.”^[47] Additionally, poetry emerged as a space for tensions between religious and secular elements to come to the fore. For example, the poet Seyyed Ashraf al-Din Hoseini, a deeply religious figure, used poetry to criticize the factions of the ulama opposed to constitutional reform by accusing them of being “the enemy of the free people” and likening them to merchants of second-hand goods who sold out religion and the country to foreigners.^[48] The language and imagery of the revolution itself were thus employed and developed through contemporary poetry.

Another important figure during this period was the linguist Ali-Akbar Dehkhoda, who used poetry, satire, articles, and essays to analyze and recontextualize the problems that arose from incorporating European ideas lacking an Iranian precedent, particularly by engaging pre-existing frameworks in Iranian society. For instance, in one of his philosophical essays intended for the secular intelligentsia, he introduced the idea of religion being an ‘internal secret police’, and while the Quran could be looked to for law, the constitution could provide the just and moral enforcement of that law.^[49] In his pieces meant to appeal to the masses, Dehkhoda primarily made use of street poetry and satire, with exaggerated characters based on existing figures in society, such as a horsefly who facilitates selling Iran to foreigners and a traveler who exposes the corruption of the state and the religious community.^[50] By creating a ‘carnival of the absurd,’ Dehkhoda analyzed the hierarchies and tensions^[51] within Iranian society, and connected both the intelligentsia and the illiterate classes to the emerging nationalist discourse.

Dissent was also expressed with shabnamehs, or jelly-graphed sheets produced by secret societies during the early years prior to the Constitutional Revolution, which attacked the shah and his administration, and often railed against the state for selling the country to foreign interests, particularly to Russia.^[52] These were either mailed directly to the leaders they criticized, or were left in highly public places, or were placed in “such unlikely places as on the Shah’s private table.”^[53] These letters show opposition to the shah’s policies even before the revolution began, and were a reminder to the shah of the principle that the ulama and constitution would re-establish during the revolution—that “his rule depended on the nation’s right to confer it upon him.”^[54] One even made use of Iran’s poetic tradition, using the style of the well-known fourteenth century poet Hafez to criticize foreign concessions made by the shah’s administration: “Oh man of base appetites, why wilt thou drain the dregs of the Russians’ Cup? For this dark cup in the end kills the guest.”^[55]

The explosion of new publications during the Constitutional Revolution was critical as the function of newspapers went far beyond simply supplying information. Traditionally, contributors to newspapers comprised a small elite, but in the constitutional era, newspapers became an open space to all members of society.  Most readers were interested in the letters to the editor. These pieces rarely responded to published articles and sometimes even responded to each other, but were usually a way for men and women from all backgrounds to voice their opinions and engage in public debate with the greater Iranian imagined community.^[56] As these letters were anonymous, they gave a voice to historically oppressed segments of the population^[57] and often allowed editors to publish views otherwise too dangerous to express.^[58] As a result, newspapers became an increasingly important part of daily life: there are accounts of illiterate people gathering in coffeehouses—where tales from the Iranian epic Shahnameh were formerly read—to listen to newspaper articles and letters being read aloud.^[59] As newspapers allowed people to join the discourse about merging European constitutionalism with Iranian values to solve the social issues caused by the shah’s intransigence, they effectively were how people claimed the justice that the shah was required to provide. 

As has been discussed until now, new ideas created room for debate and thus fostered tensions in Iranian society’s relationships with both the religious community and the dynastic realm. These ideas, however, are particularly relevant because they also created tensions between the dynastic realm of the shah, and the religious community—all of which gave rise to a range of key alliances. The main reason as to why merchants, guilds, the secular intelligentsia, the religious community, and the working poor coalesced between 1905 and 1908 into a united movement to end the arbitrary rule of the shah^[60] was because the shah’s foreign concessions had undermined the welfare of the merchant class. As the merchant class was crucial to the functioning of the Iranian economy, their difficulties had a myriad of devastating effects on all those tied to them. For instance, the ulama was no longer able to collect their religious taxes and endowments (which were how they remained financially independent of the shah) so they could no longer fund shrines, mosques, and social services for the poor.^[61]

Once the underprivileged could no longer rely on the ulama, an institution that was the very cornerstone of society, the ulama united and led a diverse set of groups in favor of the constitutionalist, modernizing initiative that reformers and the intelligentsia had envisioned.^[62] This underlying alliance between the merchants and the ulama, which has historically been of tremendous significance, is reflected in the composition of the First Majlis: the First Majlis, which convened to write the constitution to curb the powers of the shah and thus begin the modernizing project, was dominated by merchants and bazaar guild members.^[63] The mobilization of alliance systems entrenched in Iran’s social fabric was critical to the shape of the institutions that emerged through the Iranian Constitutional movement.

The Iranian Constitutional Revolution was a multifaceted movement that both united and demonstrated the contradictions between broad elements of Iranian society. The tensions between disparate elements in the Constitutional Revolution reveal that Iranian nationalism during the constitutional era was much more than a byproduct of European economic imperialism and liberal ideas. Exploration of the ways Iranian society engaged with and debated new ideas, expressed opposition to the shah’s policies, and formed alliances to achieve its aims shows that the process of molding a European-inspired constitutionalism to fit an Iranian context was not an easy feat, for it created social tensions that were critical to the development of Iranian nationalism. The Constitutional Revolution redefined the relationship between the state and broader Iranian society and created the multi-dimensional tensions which shaped Iranian nationalism in the constitutional period and beyond. Thus, Anderson’s Eurocentric view that the dynastic and religious realms must decline for nationalism to form is misplaced: while the basis of the dynastic and the religious realms’ legitimacy did change in Iran, it was their struggle against each other, and with Iranian society at large, that shaped Iranian nationalism during the Constitutional Revolution.

References

^[1] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, (London: Verso, 1983), 12.

^[2] John Foran, “The Strengths and Weaknesses of Iran’s Populist Alliance: A Class Analysis of the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911,” Theory and Society 20, 6 (Dec., 1991): 800, 802.; Joanna de Groot, “Whose Revolution? Stakeholders and stories of the ‘constitutional movement’ in Iran, 1905-11,” in Iran’s Constitutional Revolution: Popular politics, Cultural Transformations and Transnational Connections, ed. H.E. Chehabi and Vanessa Martin, London: I.B. Tauris, 2010, 18; Ansari, Politics of Nationalism, 36-37.; Litvak, “Construction of Iranian national identity,” 23.

^[3] de Groot, “Whose Revolution?,” 18, 21, 25.

^[4] Martin, Iran Between Islamic Nationalism and Secularism, 110.

^[5] Gheissari, Narratives of the Enlightenment, 35.

^[6] Gheissari, “Constitutional rights and civil law,” 71-72.; Vanessa Martin, Iran Between Islamic Nationalism and Secularism: The Constitutional Revolution of 1906, (London: I.B.Tauris, 2013), 109-110.

^[7] Martin, “State, Power and Long-Term Trends:” 461-462.

^[8] He would be replaced by either a family member, an official, or an adviser. Martin, “State, Power and Long-Term Trends:” 462.

^[9] Ali Gheissari, “Constitutional rights and the development of civil law in Iran, 1907-41,” in Iran’s Constitutional Revolution: Popular politics, Cultural Transformations and Transnational Connections, ed. H.E. Chehabi and Vanessa Martin, London: I.B. Tauris, 2010, 71.

^[10] Martin, “State, Power and Long-Term Trends:” 462

^[11] Martin, “State, Power and Long-Term Trends:” 462. The understanding of modernization being applied here is in a European sense, whereby the processes of the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment reformed political structures and laws, and allowed for greater progress in science, industry and trade. Martin, Iran Between Islamic Nationalism and Secularism, 33.

^[12] Bayat, “The rowshanfekr,” 169. ; Martin, Iran Between Islamic Nationalism and Secularism, 37, 112.

^[13] Bayat, “The rowshanfekr,” 174.

^[14] In fact, the classes most affected by the shah’s European concessions and drastic inflation, such as the merchants, secular and religious intellectuals, guilds, reformist bureaucrats, the lower classes, some members of the clergy and a minority of the political elite formed the backbone of this group. Gheissari, Narratives of the Enlightenment, 17 ; Martin, Iran Between Islamic Nationalism and Secularism, 112.

^[15] Gheissari, “Constitutional rights and civil law,” 73. ; Gheissari, Narratives of the Enlightenment, 37.; Martin, Iran Between Islamic Nationalism and Secularism, 4, 111.

^[16] Foran, “Strengths and Weaknesses:” 812.

^[17] Gheissari, Narratives of the Enlightenment, 36-37.

^[18] Martin, Iran Between Islamic Nationalism and Secularism, 35.

^[19] Martin, Iran Between Islamic Nationalism and Secularism, 113.

^[20] Martin, Iran Between Islamic Nationalism and Secularism, 1, 4, 36-37, 11.

^[21] The ulama had historically played a role in facilitating protest against the state, and was thus trusted by the people. Martin, Iran Between Islamic Nationalism and Secularism,1, 43.

^[22] Bayat, “The rowshanfekr,” 171.

^[23] Gheissari, “Constitutional rights and civil law,” 73. 

^[24] Farzaneh, Clerical Leadership, 63.

^[25] Eric Massie and Janet Afary, “Iran’s 1907 Constitution and its sources: a critical comparison,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (January 30, 2018): 3-4.

^[26] It was known that Mozaffar al-Din Shah was on his deathbed, and was sympathetic to the constitution, unlike his successor, Thus the constitution had to be written and signed by him as quickly as possible. Massie and Afary, “1907 Constitution and its sources:” 4.

^[27] Gheissari, Narratives of the Enlightenment, 38.; Martin, Iran Between Islamic Nationalism and Secularism, 115.

^[28] Massie and Afary, “1907 Constitution and its sources:” 4.

^[29] Massie and Afary, “1907 Constitution and its sources:” 6, 8.

^[30] Martin, Iran Between Islamic Nationalism and Secularism, 113.

^[31] Martin, “State, Power and Long-Term Trends:” 471.

^[32] Massie and Afary, “1907 Constitution and its sources:” 9-10.

^[33] Massie and Afary, “1907 Constitution and its sources:” 10, 13, 17.

^[34] Massie and Afary, “1907 Constitution and its sources:” 13.

^[35] Massie and Afary, “1907 Constitution and its sources:” 13, 14.; Martin, “State, Power and Long-Term Trends:” 472.

^[36] Martin, “State, Power and Long-Term Trends:” 472.

^[37] Gheissari, “Constitutional rights and civil law,” 72.

^[38] Martin, “State, Power and Long-Term Trends:” 462.

^[39] Gheissari, “Constitutional rights and civil law,” 72.

^[40] Litvak, “Construction of Iranian national identity,” 12.

^[41] Litvak, “Construction of Iranian national identity,” 13.

^[42] Martin, Iran Between Islamic Nationalism and Secularism, 36.

^[43] Nahid Mozaffari, “Crafting Constitutionalism: An Iranian Secular Modernist Project,” in Iran’s Constitutional Revolution: Popular politics, Cultural Transformations and Transnational Connections, ed. H.E. Chehabi and Vanessa Martin, London: I.B. Tauris, 2010, 193

^[44] Homa Katouzian, “The Poetry of the Constitutional Revolution,” in Iran’s Constitutional Revolution: Popular politics, Cultural Transformations and Transnational Connections, ed. H.E. Chehabi and Vanessa Martin, London: I.B. Tauris, 2010, 1.

^[45] Sorour Soroudi, “The Impact of Iran’s Constitutional Revolution on the Social and Literary Outlook of the Poets of the Time: Part I,” Iranian Studies 12, 1/2 (Winter-Spring 1979): 5-6, 8.

^[46] This refers to Muhammad Ali Shah, who was the successor to Mozaffar al-Din Shah, who signed the 1906 Fundamental Law. Muhammad Ali Shah eventually used his militia to destroy the Majles in 1908. Martin, “State, Power and Long-Term Trends:” 474.

^[47] Soroudi, “Social and Literary Outlook of the Poets:” 25.

^[48] Katouzian, “Poetry of the Constitutional Revolution,” 1-12.

^[49] Mozaffari, “Crafting Constitutionalism,” 206.

^[50] Mozaffari, “Crafting Constitutionalism,” 211.

^[51] Mozaffari, “Crafting Constitutionalism,” 211.

^[52] Nikki R. Keddie, “Iranian Politics 1900-1905: Background to Revolution,” Middle Eastern Studies 5, 1 (Jan., 1969): 15.

^[53] Keddie, “Iranian Politics:” 16.

^[54] Bayat, “The rowshanfekr,” 172.

^[55] Keddie, “Iranian Politics:” 16.

^[56] Negin Nabavi, “Readership, the Press and the Public Sphere in the First Constitutional Era,” in Iran’s Constitutional Revolution: Popular politics, Cultural Transformations and Transnational Connections, ed. H.E. Chehabi and Vanessa Martin, London: I.B. Tauris, 2010, 220.

^[57] Nabavi, “Readership,” 221.

^[58] Nabavi, “Readership,” 220.

^[59] Nabavi, “Readership,” 219.

^[60] Martin, Iran Between Islamic Nationalism and Secularism, 112.

^[61] Farzaneh, Clerical Leadership, 60.

^[62] Martin, Iran Between Islamic Nationalism and Secularism, 112.

^[63] Soheila Torabi Farsani, “Merchants, their class identification process, and constitutionalism,” in Iran’s Constitutional Revolution: Popular politics, Cultural Transformations and Transnational Connections, ed. H.E. Chehabi and Vanessa Martin, London: I.B. Tauris, 2010, 121.

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