What Does Iran Really Want?

In essence, it may not be clear if the different factions are really divided between advocates and opponents of the development of nuclear weapons, or if Iran - conservatives included - intends to exploit the advantages it can gain by merely threatening to develop them. One thing is certain: the benefits Tehran is currently reaping from the negotiation itself are of great value. They help maintain the image of a powerful Iran in the eyes of the Iranian people, which in turn justifies continued massive spending on the conventional arsenal.

The military-sectarian shield 

Through a diverse set of military resources, including bases for missiles of various ranges, drones, cyberattacks, and Shia proxy militias, Iran is allegedly waging preventive battles on advanced fronts, against any hostile forces seeking to destroy it. Within this vision, the countries where Iran is directly or indirectly present are all theaters of confrontation, each with a different function: Lebanon for the fight against Israel, Syria to confront Sunni jihadism and Israel, Iraq to drive out the American invaders, and Yemen to protect the Shia-related Houthi community.

Iran’s support for the Palestinian cause and its rhetoric of an ongoing war against Israel should be read in this context. If it was up to the Iranian people, a large majority would be in favor of normalizing relations with the Jewish state. And if seen from a sectarian perspective, Jerusalem is mostly a holy site of Sunni heritage and is not central to the Shia tradition. It is true that Ayatollah Khomeini was an early champion of the Palestinian cause, but in retrospect, that stance seems to have served more as an alibi to hide the narrowly Shia nature of his project. Iran’s anti-Israeli militancy serves multiple purposes, the most important of which is to argue that the Jewish state’s military power and behavior justify Iran’s own military and nuclear program. As to Iran’s arming of the Sunni movement Hamas in Gaza, it serves to maintain an indirect presence on Israel’s southwestern flank while driving a wedge into the Sunni front of Arab countries. 

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ (IRGC) enterprise of creating proxies across the region started in Lebanon. Hezbollah appeared in the aftermath of Israel’s invasion of the country in 1982. Its birth remains associated with the deadly attacks against the French and American contingents of the multinational force deployed there at the time. But it was the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 that marked the beginning of a new dimension for the project. Building on the success of their Lebanese creation, the IRGC called on Hezbollah to form armed Shia groups in other countries, starting with Iraq, to fight the American occupiers and later the Sunni jihadists of the Islamic State organization. Soon, these militias became the spearhead of a multifaceted Iranian strategy throughout the Arab world. Hezbollah’s role evolved accordingly to become the chief operator of the Revolutionary Guards and the connecting agent between the various militias. The network thus formed is waging a borderless war, and has changed the course of the various conflicts in the region. 

In both Iraq and Lebanon, where popular demonstrations against the government and only implicitly against Iranian influence have been ongoing for the last two years, Tehran has used its allies in government, parliament and on the streets, to drown the movement in violence and undermine its legitimacy. 

In Syria, Hezbollah launched its fighters directly into the fray as of 2013 when the regime was seriously challenged by the opposition on the ground. It paid dearly to prevent Assad’s defeat because his downfall would have meant losing the main land route for the transit of strategic weapons sent from Iran. Once Assad’s power was stabilized, Syria, and more recently Iraq started to serve as trial grounds to test the range and accuracy of ballistic missiles, which in turn led Israel to expand the scope of its own raids to include Iraq, in addition to Lebanon and Syria. 

Syria has been a precious learning arena for Shia fighters. As it became short of combatants, Iran also widened the scope of its recruitment to include Shia fighters from Afghanistan (many were refugees in Iran) and Pakistan. For their part, the Sunni jihadists were also expanding their recruitment, thus fueling a deadly spiral of two jihadisms feeding off each other. All of this has weakened the position of those within Iran who advocated appeasement, and strengthened the hand of the radical ideologues who believe that the original blame lies on the United States. "To those who ask why we went to Syria’, says a commander of the Revolutionary Guards in Damascus, ‘ask them who authorized the Americans to occupy countries," 

Bled white

With this relentless regional expansion, Iran is being bled white. No doubt the sanctions are partly responsible for the country’s difficulties, but the protesters’ slogans in 2017 were "leave Syria alone, think of us." The brain drain in Iran, a country endowed with considerable resources, is the highest in the world. When faced with the Covid-19 pandemic, the state proved unfit to handle the situation. Religious sites and places of worship became symbols of the pandemic, and doubts about the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic have started to affect the regime’s social base. The six powers trying to renegotiate the JCPOA in Vienna will likely be confronted with representatives of an Iranian regime which is domestically contested and on the defensive externally.

A new source of concern for the Islamic Republic has emerged with the United Arab Emirates’ signing of the so-called Abraham Accords. The agreement reached with Israel jeopardizes Iran’s efforts to gain strategic hegemony thanks to its regional military-sectarian shield. Israel has in effect gained a foothold in Iran’s immediate neighborhood, exposing it to high risks of espionage and infiltration. 

The day after Joe Biden’s election, Saudi Arabia made an initial overture of appeasement toward Tehran. Whether this was out of a desire for detente, or out of fear that the Vienna negotiations would ultimately leave Riyadh unprotected is unclear. What we know for sure is that Saudi Arabia is eager to negotiate a withdrawal of its forces from Yemen without losing face, which for Iran is a sign that its policy of intimidation is bearing fruit. But Iran also has an important reason to cooperate: it needs to deter the Kingdom from normalizing relations with Israel, as the Emirates have done, or else its military-sectarian shield will be further obliterated. 

The choices facing the West 

Would Iran conditionally give up the considerable power it has acquired through its regional scheming? In the view of many Iranians and of Western experts, the Islamic Republic attaches greater strategic importance to the militias it has deployed throughout the region than to its nuclear, or even ballistic program.

If we assume that the nature of the regime and its obsession with survival are the reasons for its predatory behavior, what does that imply for the West in terms of managing relations with Iran? Should it continue the strategy of suffocation led by Donald Trump and assume that the regime is on the brink of collapse? Should it comfort itself with the idea that the Iranian regime is sowing the seeds of its own destruction? The fact is that no one, and certainly not the West, can produce the antidote that will end the rule of the doctrinarian clergymen. 

The other option of appeasing Iran’s millennial siege-mentality in the hope that this might diffuse its offensive strategy which Tehran claims is defensive has been tried by the Obama administration. But avoidance of any friction with Tehran became an objective in itself and led Iran to expand and enhance its presence in the region in an unprecedented way. Both Trump’s and Obama’s strategies failed.

The contention that it will be easier to discuss Iran’s behavior in the region once a nuclear deal is in place has proved ineffective. The largest offensives by Iran-led militias in Syria took place while the United States was still committed to the JCPOA agreement. Aleppo was besieged and then devastated by a ground offensive led by Shia militias with air cover from Russia and the regime only one a year after the conclusion of the JCPOA accord. Hezbollah’s budget had quadrupled two years after the agreement was signed. Iran has almost never curtailed its interventions in the region, neither before nor after President Trump’s denunciation of the agreement and the tightening of sanctions. 

Since Joe Biden’s election, it has once again become possible to focus on Iran’s behavior and stop the crusade against the regime itself. But with much of the Obama team once again in charge of the relationship with Iran, many in Washington fear that the administration might over-reward Iran in the re-negotiation of the agreement simply to ensure that the regime recommits to not crossing a threshold which it may not intend to cross anyway. Having acquired the technological capability to produce nuclear weapons, like many countries before it, Iran would gain more from receiving international recognition of its status as a threshold power, than it would if it developed its nuclear program further. So far, this posture, which it frames as a concession, has allowed it to pre-empt discussion about its interference in the region. 

Some Arab governments may be intimidated or frightened by Iran’s Shia agenda, but Sunni jihadists are not. On the contrary, Sunni jihadism is flourishing, and the Islamic State will continue to create offshoots. It is already doing so with the emergence of a new generation of young jihadists recruited mainly in the Central Asian republics bordering Iran and Russia. 
 
Iran’s nuclear program is certainly a long-term strategic threat, but the actions of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard are creating mayhem now and poisoning the Middle East for decades to come.

When pressed to respond to this argument, American diplomats involved in the Vienna negotiations reply that the negotiations are complex enough as they are and cannot be cluttered up with regional issues. But the fact remains that Western silence on these issues, denounced by all countries in the region - from Israel to Saudi Arabia, to Egypt and Syria - can only further undermine the credibility of the United States and Europe as partners in building security. Nothing would please Iran more than seeing America and Europe disengage from the region. To do so without a diplomatic strategy to accompany the disengagement risks prolonging the curse of the American intervention in Iraq. The Iranian negotiators are wily, but they are essentially operating according to the classic zero-sum game. With this mindset, their perception of the West’s resolve will determine the future stability of the Middle East. The blind approach that sees no threat requiring international attention other than Iran’s nuclear program is wreaking havoc across the region.

Copyright: ATTA KENARE / AFP