When it comes to Iran and Donald Trump, there is so much bluff, backed by military hardware, that the truth rarely makes an appearance.
It appears that a bullish Iran is going into negotiations with the US on Friday adopting maximalist positions that do not seem greatly different to those it adopted in the five rounds of talks before the negotiations were abruptly halted by the surprise Israeli attack on Iran last June.
Given how much Iran has been weakened in the intervening eight months, Tehran’s refusal to change its negotiating position is at one level surprising.
After all, during its 12-day war with Israel, the vulnerabilities of Iran’s air defences, and the penetration by Israeli intelligence of Iran’s political military and scientific elite were both revealed. More than 30 Iranian military commanders were killed, and 160 strikes on Iranian military targets undertaken.
On 22 June the US, using B-2s and 30 Tomahawk missiles, hit Iran’s three major nuclear sites at Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz, eviscerating its nuclear programme. In September UN-wide sanctions were reimposed on the country after the European powers ended their objections to this step. In January Trump tightened the screw by imposing a tariff of 25% on goods from countries that trade with Iran.
All this has had a real-world impact. Since June Iran’s currency has more than halved in value against the dollar, and food inflation is heading towards three figures. These were two of the factors that sparked the nationwide protests in January that revealed the willingness of the security services to slaughter thousands of fellow Iranians. Such is the government’s anxiety at the public mood, it is still filtering the internet more than a month after the censorship started.
Iran’s diplomats are hardly behaving as if the government was last month on the brink of collapse, or even now fears a return to a conflict with the US that might bring the protesters back on to the streets for the final battle. Instead it acts as if it can dictate the parameters of the talks with the US, their venue and their main topic.
Iran’s negotiators are hugely experienced and never show a trace of weakness. Anything negotiable is negotiated. “One more thing” is their favourite phrase, according to Wendy Sherman, the chief negotiator for the US nuclear deal in 2013-15. Iran’s negotiating team was legalistic, full of stamina, well prepared and tough, Sherman recalled.
Nevertheless, it is surprising how confident Tehran seems that the Oman talks will not immediately collapse, and if they do that the government will survive.
The simplest explanation for Iran’s hardball tactics is that the regime simply does not believe Trump will carry out his threat to attack given the perils of doing so. The reprisals by Iran on Israel and US military bases could be disproportionate, and lead to fresh tensions between Washington and the Gulf states angry that the US has destabilised the region.
Hamidreza Azizi, a visiting fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, said: “There seems to be a consensus among the Islamic Republic security elite that President Trump doesn’t want prolonged and messy wars at high cost. So the only thing they have to do is to make sure that it’s going to be as unpredictable, as messy and as expensive in terms of human cost and economic cost as possible.”
But there is a further explanation. Iran does not believe Trump has a strategy for change inside Iran, or any interest as yet in linking up with the opposition inside and outside Iran.
It is unlikely a politician as instinctive as Trump would ever have something as elevated as theory of change in a society as complex as Iran, but the administration seems to have little idea how the political gravity on the ground might shift if the US bombs start to drop.
As recently as last week Marco Rubio was disarmingly frank that the US did not have a plan. “I don’t think anyone can give you a simple answer as to what happens next in Iran if the supreme leader and the regime were to fall, other than the hope that there would be some ability to have somebody within their system that you could work towards a similar transition,” he told the Senate foreign relations committee.
Comparing Iran with Venezuela, he said: “I would imagine it would be even far more complex than the one we’re describing now, because you’re talking about a regime that’s been in place for a very long time.”
Supporters of Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed Shah of Iran, and other figures in the diaspora, insist a US attack can galvanise the masses to return to the streets, and despite the thousands arrested and killed, the crowds, their resolve hardened by the loss of loved ones, will be better organised and prepared.
“Iranians want the regime to be bombed,” said one of Pahlavi’s closest supporters, Saeed Ghasseminejad. The security forces will, under this theory, lose the political will to commit a second massacre, especially if the Iranian government was shown to have spurned a chance to strike a nuclear deal.
Other dissidents inside Iran can see the case for foreign intervention even if they would prefer if it was endorsed by the UN. The human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh told Iranwire: “As for public sentiment inside Iran, many people are waiting for this strike. Many who have been driven to the brink see it as their last hope. When a society feels completely powerless against tyranny, it begins to look outward.”
Many of the strongest statements from dissidents inside Iran reject external intervention. They include those by Mir Hossein Mousavi, the former Iranian prime minister and Green Movement leader, as well as the collective known as Group of 17, including the Nobel prize winner Narges Mohammadi and Mehdi Mahmoudian, the Oscar nominated screenwriter. Mousavi, 83, who is under house arrest, said he wanted a peaceful and democratic transition of power. He is less clear how that can be achieved given the repression under way.
Mahmoudian told the BBC that no patriotic Iranian would ever support an external attack on their country. He warned that war would undermine domestic democratic agency, deepen social divisions and prevent a domestic democratic transition built round a referendum.
But this does not mean these opponents of foreign intervention are passive or defeatist.
The statement of the 17 issued on 2 January was unequivocal in demanding change that was neither reformism or revolution. “Iran can only be saved by prosecuting those responsible for the repression, ending this inhumane system, and enabling the people to determine their political future in a democratic manner,” the statement said.
Three of the 17 signatories have now been arrested on charges of helping Mousavi draft his statement. Vida Rabbani, one of the three arrested, is said to be refusing to cooperate with the authorities in jail. Mohammadi, arrested separately, says she is on hunger strike.
Even longtime advisers to Pahlavi worry that the call for the population to take to the streets was a mistake.
Trump, for the moment, seems to have lost interest in those in jail or seeking radical change inside Iran. That may change, however, if the Iranian negotiators overplay their hand in Oman.
