Iran: a strategic mistake in the making?

With thanks to Quantum Bird

Iran’s history is rich and complex. From the days of the glorious Persian Empire to today’s Islamic Republic, Iran has experienced all kinds of geopolitical circumstances, including being, for a period, a colony of the Western powers. Like any former colony that has liberated itself through a popular revolution, Iran has its resentful comprador elite – some of them ex-patriates in the hegemon’s metropolis and others infiltrated into the ranks of its society – who dedicate their existence to sabotaging the regime and plotting to recover their privileges taken away by the people. This is a very prevalent geopolitical model. So what justifies the short-sightedness of some “Western geopolitical analysts” and “Iran experts” in accessing Iran’s geopolitical reality? At the moment, this short-sightedness reveals itself as an unjustified enthusiasm about the negotiations between Iran and the US, supposedly about the Islamic Republic’s activities related to the production and use of nuclear fuel.

Over the last twenty-odd years, Iran’s nuclear program has been a hot topic in the geopolitical arena. In the second half of the 2000s, Brazil and Turkey led an initiative to abort the Islamic Republic’s advances in uranium enrichment. The agreement reached would allow Iran to keep its nuclear power plants, but provided for the dismantling of the nascent enrichment infrastructure. The country was to consume nuclear fuel produced by third parties. This agreement was actively torpedoed by the US (Obama), Russia (Medvedev) and other members of the UN Security Council, which allowed Iran to go ahead consolidating and safeguarding its enrichment infrastructure. The arrival of Hassan Rouhani’s Western reformist government in Iran allowed the country to engage in negotiations with the UN Security Council, plus Germany – the strange guest in this arrangement, since the Germans decided still back in 2000 to extinguish all its nuclear-related activities. These negotiations led to the so-called JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), an agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, restitution of sequestered resources, etc. In 2018, the US (Trump) unilaterally pulled out of the agreement and further sanctioned Iran. Note that the JCPOA remains in force vis-à-vis the other signatories. The same Trump is now pressuring Iran to negotiate its nuclear program, using as leverage the automatic snapback mechanism provided for in the JCPOA that could be activated until the end of 2025.

It’s worth noting that all this is happening in the context of warmongering rhetoric, economic sanctions and deliberate geopolitical and economic sabotage of the Islamic Republic by Western powers. In addition, of course, to the incessant – and irritating – bombardment of extremist Anglo-Zionist propaganda that Iran has been one week away from producing a nuclear bomb for the last 20 years. It matters little that in 2025, as in the last 20 years, the intelligence agencies of the US and other countries have produced reports attesting to the absence of any evidence of such developments and that in Iran there is a fatwa (religious decree) prohibiting the development of weapons of mass destruction.

On the other hand, in the almost euphoric atmosphere of geopolitical analysis focused on multipolarity, there is a lot of talk, usually with little substance, about the strategic partnership between Iran, China and Russia. The truth is that the level of mutual trust between these three actors is not the highest, especially with regard to Iran. In fact, while the strategic cooperation agreement between Iran and Russia has no provisions related to mutual defense, interaction with China is basically organized around commercial interests, mainly in the area of hydrocarbons. Certainly Russia and China would not benefit from a regime change in Iran and its conversion into a member of the Western bloc, and, for sure, would not remain passive in the face of such a development, but both seem to calibrate their interaction to avoid Iran’s rise to the status of a first-class regional power, which would potentially offend their interests in the other countries of Southwest Asia.

The aim of the Western powers is to promote regime change in Iran. Despite the Israeli prime minister’s wishes to promote a Libya-style scenario in the Islamic Republic, destabilizing Iran at this level would not be to anyone’s advantage. The preference seems to be for the installation of a pro-Western regime, preferably presided over by a decoy president in the style of Lula – always capable of saying the right thing and doing nothing about it – who would convert Iran into a soft neo-colony in the style of Brazil, who would ensure the export of commodities and the entry of the US and Europe indirectly into the BRICS circle, in order to sabotage it from within and control its expansion in southwest Asia – echoes of Brazil vetoing Venezuela’s accession.

The installation of such a regime in Iran presupposes the economic exhaustion of the country, as was done with Syria, and the dismantling of its military deterrence, as was done with Libya. Part of the Iranian leadership is well aware of this game. Moreover, there is no shortage of examples of what happens to a country in the process of emancipation and assertion of sovereignty when it gives up its military deterrence in exchange for economic integration with the West. Everyone saw what happened to Muammar Gaddafi and Libya as retribution for their engagement with the West.

The undisputed champion of this game is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. They wasted no time: they left the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and set up their nuclear deterrent. What would their fate have been if they had wavered? What was the Chinese and Russian reaction to the development of the North Korean nuclear deterrent? Both condemned it.

Iran’s reluctance to follow the North Korean model is incomprehensible to most serious analysts. Especially considering that its main regional rival, Israel, which has weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear ones, donated by the US, is not part of the NPT and threatens the Islamic Republic on a daily basis. Note that there is no mention or international scrutiny of Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Note also the position of the US. They have nuclear weapons, but they are part of the NPT and have permanent seat in the UN Security Council. In other words, they are in a position to dictate nuclear non-proliferation policy to the rest of the world, but also they have a dedicated proxy, Israel, armed with nuclear artifacts that remain unchecked.

Here’s a question for readers: why did Russia and China stay in the JCPOA after the US pulled out? Why didn’t they leave and make a separate agreement with Iran?

In short, I believe that the ongoing negotiations between Iran and the US only make sense if they are a ploy by the Islamic Republic to buy time while it builds up its nuclear deterrent. Another scenario – highly unlikely – would be the forced inclusion of Israel in the NPT and the dismantling of its nuclear arsenal under the supervision of the UN Security Council. Otherwise, I fear that re-engaging in a re-run of the JCPOA-like aggreement with the US would be a colossal strategic mistake – echoes of the Minsk agreements. In any case, in a year and a half, perhaps sooner, Trump will be a lame duck with nothing to lose politically, capable of ordering a US attack on Iran in the name of Israel. I don’t see Russia and China risking a nuclear confrontation with the US over Iran.

Portuguese version on Saker Latinoamérica: https://sakerlatam.blog/ira-erro-estrategico-em-gestacao/