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If Iran's Ambitions Are Fundamentally Ideological, then Negotiations Are Pointless

(New York Times) Bret Stephens - Ebrahim Raisi was among the handful of Iranian leaders most involved in the "death commissions" involved in the secret executions of thousands of political prisoners in 1988. Last week he was elected president of Iran in a rigged process in which centrist candidates were disqualified before the vote took place. He is currently under U.S. Treasury Department sanctions for his human-rights abuses. It is possible, even likely, that he will succeed Ayatollah Khamenei as supreme leader. The important question raised by Raisi's elevation is about the kind of regime we are dealing with, as negotiators in Vienna are completing the revised nuclear accord. Several years ago, Henry Kissinger asked whether Iran was "a nation or a cause." If Iran's ambitions are defined by normal considerations of national security, prosperity and self-respect, then the U.S. can negotiate with it on the basis of objective self-interest, its and ours. Alternatively, if Iran's ambitions are fundamentally ideological - to spread the cause of its Islamic Revolution to every part of the Middle East and beyond - then negotiations are largely pointless. Iran will be bent on dominance and subversion, not stability. Those who thought that Iranian politics would ultimately move in a more moderate direction were wrong. The regime is doubling down on religion, repression and revolution.
2021-06-24 00:00:00
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