The Persian Blog of Kings

It’s difficult to write about the JCPOA these days. The deal, to the extent you can still talk about it as a unitary concept, exists in a fungible state. Like Schrödinger’s cat, the talks are neither alive nor dead, both on the verge of success and the edge of failure. The truth is that after six months of negotiations, those of us observing from afar are still left guessing as to where exactly things stand.

The vicissitudes of the negotiations should be well understood by now. Periods of advancement and growing optimism were upended by a late-stage demand, sending the negotiators scrambling back home to find a reasonable middle ground with their leadership. “Unnamed officials” have served as our Greek chorus along the way, narrating the drama via the press with expected bias. Yet despite a few notable setbacks, the talks stumbled onwards, with all parties continuing to work diligently toward closing the gaps in their positions.

By most accounts, the two opposing sides in the talks — Iran and the US — resolved all nuclear-related issues weeks ago. The only remaining point of dissension involves a dispute technically unrelated to the nuclear file, namely whether or not the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) should remain on the United States State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO).

The United States first designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization during the Trump administration in April 2019, approximately a year after Trump formally withdrew the United States from the JCPOA. The designation was a continuation of his so-called “maximum pressure” campaign to push the Iranian government to the point of either capitulation on its nuclear program or, barring their surrender, total regime collapse.

The designation of the IRGC was quintessentially Trumpian in all the prototypical ways. It provided a splashy, headline-grabbing piece of news; it was an unprecedented use of executive power; and, perhaps most of all, it was incredibly superficial. The United States already had so many sanctions on Iranian institutions and officials that designating the IRGC itself was of questionable material or strategic value. In practical terms, the designation could do little to curb the IRGC’s power inside Iran or in the Middle East region, where it continues to play an active role in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. What it has achieved is to make repairing U.S. relations with Iran much more difficult. This was, perhaps, always the point.

As is so often the case in Iran-U.S. disputes, the problem is one of perspective. From the Iranian point of view, the deal cannot exist again without restoring the conditions that led to its creation in the first place. The Iranians draw a straight line from the withdrawal decision to the IRGC designation as part of Trump’s overall anti-Iran strategy. Because this decision followed the United States’ withdrawal from the JCPOA, it is, in the Iranians’ view, incumbent upon the Biden administration to remove this particular sanction so that the deal can be restored.

For the United States, the situation is more complicated. Unlike the Iranians, who see the designation as connected to the nuclear deal, American politicians seem mostly to view it in isolation. The IRGC is an obvious “Bad Actor” for any American politician, and there is little to be gained from saying “nice” things about it in public. Even the small step of officially removing the IRGC from a terrorist organization list will provoke the ire of many influential people and groups. Thus, the decision to de-list comes with a high political capital price tag.

Unfortunately for the Biden administration, the sticker shock is a demon of their own design. Given Biden’s characterization of Trump’s Iran policy as a massive failure during the 2020 presidential campaign, it was reasonable to suspect that once in office Biden would move quickly to remove or walk back some of the Trump-era sanctions. There were no legislative impediments to doing so; he could have achieved this almost immediately via executive order. The removal of some of the more punishing — or, conversely, the more ineffective — sanctions could have served as a gesture of good faith to an Iranian population that was highly skeptical of American intentions.

Yet instead of acting swiftly, his administration slow-played any attempt to address either tension with Iran or the JCPOA specifically. There were credible explanations for this lull. The Biden administration had to transition into office and staff up, including confirming cabinet positions with only a razor-thin advantage in the Senate. There was the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal. There was the pandemic.

Over time, and perhaps without the administration realizing it, their inaction began to morph into at least the appearance of acceptance. By not doing anything to remove the Trump sanctions, the Biden administration seemed to be incorporating them into its own Iran policy. This wasn’t merely a passive acceptance of the status quo. Biden officials began framing the sanctions as leverage to pressure the Iranians into walking back their nuclear progress before the U.S. would consider sanctions relief. For the Iranians, many of whom were already skeptical of the functional difference between Trump and Biden, the dangling of relief as a carrot to the ongoing application of the sanctions stick confirmed their suspicions about the homogeneity of U.S. politicians, at least when it comes to Iran policy.

Each week that passes without any positive developments makes it seem increasingly unlikely that the parties in Vienna will restore the deal. Indeed, the only news these days concerning the JCPOA is negative. There are the ongoing whispers of Israeli strategic leaks, sabotage, and assassinations aimed at derailing a deal; rumors of Biden’s impending re-embrace of the Saudi monarchy; as well as mounting pressure against Iran at the IAEA, including rumors of a possible official censure. All the while, Iran continues its buildup of nuclear material, inching it ever closer to a bomb that it claims it doesn’t want but has little choice but to pursue.

Given how little we know about what actually happens inside those Vienna conference rooms, it’s reasonable to hold out hope for yet one more breakthrough. But until we get a glimpse inside the box, it’s hard not to imagine the worst.

Well, hello there! Once again, I have gone far too long without offering a reason for why I suddenly ceased posting on this page. The primary explanation is that this is a vanity project and I was, to put it mildly, too busy to find the time to do the research, writing, and occasional editing that makes this website worthwhile. Between work, family, moving house, another hip surgery, and the generic rigamarole of daily life with a small child, there simply wasn’t time left over for unpaid and under-read blogging. Yet there is a better answer here: I was working on some other academic projects that gobbled up the remainder of what little free time I had. Among those projects was a book, my first, which as of a few weeks ago, is now in review for publication with Hurst/Oxford University Press! The book is an outgrowth and update of my doctoral thesis, focusing on the Iran-Israel conflict and the political narratives that define and drive their competition. I will have more details as the publication date nears, but for now, you can check out the cover art and a brief description over on Hurst’s website. Sign up for their mailing list if you want timely notice on their newest publications, including my book once it comes out.

This is the part where I pledge, yet again, to get back to posting here with more frequency. I hope this will be the case in the weeks and months. There’s more than enough going on in the world today, particularly with Iran, to justify some independent and, at least in my view, levelheaded analysis. With so much on my plate, I can’t make promises, but I’ll do my best. In an age of 280-character soundbites, I think maintaining some degree of long-form focus on a singular and complex issue like Iran and its foreign affairs is important and necessary. This is not to say that there aren’t any good writers and researchers working on this topic already, but I hope to do what I can to provide even a bit more commentary on the edges. You never know what someone might find helpful or informative. Alright, enough with the self-veneration. Let’s get [back] on with the show.

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Last we left off in February 2021, things weren’t looking so hot. Despite Joe Biden’s defeat of Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election and his assumption of office in January 2021, Iran-US relations had yet to show much sign of improvement from the historic lows reached during Trump’s final year in office. The U.S. was out of the JCPOA (a.k.a. the Iran deal), which while still nominally “in effect,” no longer served any discernable diplomatic or security purpose; Iran was systematically breaching its pledged commitment to the deal, enriching and stockpiling uranium to levels that put it within a stone’s throw of compiling enough fissile material for constructing a nuclear weapon; and the U.S. was imposing so-called “maximum pressure” economic sanctions — originally initiated by Trump as punishment for Iran’s nefarious behavior — on Iran for its misbehavior.

And now?

All those things are still true!

The first ten months of the Biden administration was a prolonged exercise in finger-pointing between Iran and the United States, with each declaring that it was the other’s responsibility to take the first step back toward restoration of the original JCPOA. The United States demanded that Iran descale its nuclear program back within the original deal’s terms before dropping sanctions. The Iranians, meanwhile, argued that the United States, having been the first to breach the agreement, should have to roll back sanctions and return to compliance before Iran does the same.

The Biden administration’s decision to insist on an Iran-first approach effectively eliminated the possibility of any engagement with Hassan Rouhani’s moderate/reformist coalition administration during its final few months in office. While it’s true that the unelected portions of the Iranian regime, namely Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, were reluctant to hand a political “victory” to Rouhani in the twilight of his regime — particularly as it planned a transition to a more hardline government in the 2021 presidential election (more on that in a moment) — the Biden administration didn’t exactly make it difficult for the Iranians to say no. Biden’s failure to show any sort of contrition or even bare acknowledgment of the missteps of the Trump administration in its handling of Iran relations and the JCPOA bolstered Iran’s argument for hardening its stance toward the West. From the Iranian perspective, the rationale was simple: if Biden was essentially maintaining the same “maximum pressure” sanctions as Trump and using them as leverage against Iran, then was there really any difference between the two men?

In mid-2021, Iranians went to the polls to “elect” a new president. In a severely restricted and highly orchestrated affair, they chose Ibrahim Raisi, a devout hardline cleric and consummate regime insider who had previously served in high-level unelected roles throughout the Iranian system, including as head of the judiciary. Even by the degraded standards of Iranian electoral politics, the 2021 vote stood out as especially undemocratic. The Guardian Council eliminated the vast majority of candidates, including all viable reformist and moderate politicians, making it easy for Raisi, who had been thoroughly defeated by Hassan Rouhani in the more open 2017 presidential election, to secure victory. Most Iranians voted with their feet, or rather without them, by choosing to stay home rather than cast a ballot.

Upon entering office, Raisi took his time in resuming negotiations. As expected, he installed a hardline cabinet that held little affinity for or experience in the West, a stark contrast to Rouhani’s cabinet which featured American doctoral degree holders than the cabinets of many European countries. After weeks of speculation, talks between Iran, the P4+1 (China, Russia, Great Britain, and France, plus Germany), and the United States finally began on November 29, 2021.

Initially, the hope was that these talks would progress fairly rapidly toward a restoration of the JCPOA. Perhaps, a few naive optimists wondered, they might even expand on and enhance the previous agreement to further constrain Iran’s nuclear program or reign in its malign behavior. Naturally, these dreams evaporated almost immediately upon the parties’ arrival in Vienna. The Iranians showed up with surprising new demands, making it difficult for negotiators to find areas of shared understanding. Further complicating matters was that, in contrast to the original JCPOA negotiations, the United States and Iran were no longer talking directly to each other. Instead, they communicated through European intermediaries shuttling between the two camps in Vienna.

Slowly, Iran and the United States worked their way toward something resembling an agreement, which, according to most observers, looks unsurprisingly similar to the original JCPOA.

The most significant remaining issue involves the legal status of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. In 2019, the Trump administration designated the IRGC, an official branch of Iran’s military and a significant force in Iranian politics and economics, as a foreign terrorist organization. The move was unprecedented. It was the first time an official branch of a government or military had been hit with that label, which prompted a series of automatic sanctions and threats of secondary sanctions for any group or entity providing the IRGC with material support. As part of the final agreement, the Iranians want the label removed, but the Biden administration appears hesitant to give in, perhaps because doing so could prompt political backlash from hawkish Democrats, not to mention Republicans, who are constantly on the lookout for opportunities to paint Biden as weak ahead of the 2022 midterms this November.

To state the obvious here, yes, a deal — any deal — that convinces Iran to rein in its nuclear program will produce a far better immediate future than an alternative “no deal” scenario. If precedent is any indicator, Iran will likely adhere to the terms of the agreement, as long as it feels that the other parties, including the United States, are doing so as well. Leadership may have changed in Iran, but its near and medium-term objectives — economic and diplomatic reintegration with the rest of the world — have not. They will gladly take the opportunity, however precarious, to lessen tensions with the West and create some breathing space for economic development.

Yet from a narrative standpoint, I think it’s almost irrelevant at this stage whether or not Iran and the United States can overcome these final hurdles to reach an accord. There is no goodwill left here. For Iran, the resurrection of the JCPOA will not restore the lost trust in the West following Trump’s unilateral declaration to withdraw, nor will it repair the goodwill that the Iranian populace once felt toward the United States. No one will be dancing in the street this time around.

To make matters worse, there is no reason to believe that this deal has any staying power. As part of these negotiations, Iran has demanded guarantees that the United States won’t simply repeat its unilateral withdrawal again at a later date. They won’t get any. Regardless of whatever language the Biden administration manages to insert in the text, these words are just a fig leaf to provide some logical rationalization for the Iranians to place faith in the diplomatic process. Biden’s commitment won’t be worth much to the next Republican president, particularly if Trump runs and wins again in 2024.

A rewarmed JCPOA will not be a cause for celebration in the United States either. At best, Biden will have spent significant time, energy, and political capital just to arrive back at square one with the Iranians. They’ve greenlit a sequel that no one asked for or wanted to see. Even if they can implement the agreement and get Iran to scale back its nuclear program to pre-2019 levels, what comes next will prove a much more difficult challenge.

For Iran, it’s less the sanctions relief itself — which is essentially a United States legal transaction — that matters than it is their expectations beyond the negotiations and ratification of a deal. A central promise of the JCPOA, whether or not it was ever explicitly stated in the talks, was that it would open the doorway to foreign investment in Iran. Throughout the spring and summer of 2016, a host of European and Asian trade delegations made their way to Tehran to explore possibilities for economic cooperation. Will that happen again this year, assuming a new deal is signed by then? I’m not so sure.

Financial investments are not charity. Investors inject money premised upon the idea that the return will exceed the initial investment. In terms of attracting foreign investment, this requires confidence that money that crosses into Iran will ultimately, at some stage, be able to come back out. Iran already has enough problems in this regard thanks to its highly opaque, inefficient, and corrupt economic sector, which many experts have long cited as a reason for foreign investment hesitancy. It stands virtually no chance with the threat of sanctions looming on the horizon. The United States is only two and a half years and one election away from a potential return to Trumpian politics. With that Sword of Damocles hanging over the country, what sort of homo economicus would be eager to park millions of dollars in Iran for the long-term?

If the 2015/2016 JCPOA negotiations and implementation felt like the beginning of a new era for Iran and the United States, the current moment feels much more like the end of one. I still believe that both sides will find a way to get to “yes” on the Iran deal revival, simply because the alternative is too uncertain and unpleasant to entertain, but neither will walk away feeling good about what they achieved. Where things go from here is difficult to say, but I don’t see a lot of avenues leading to sunshine and flowers. Most likely, the US and Iran will muddle through to the next round of elections, or perhaps that long-awaited leadership transition in Iran will shake things up enough to provide some kind of opening. There is always the temptation to hope the situation will improve, but with the vibes this bad, there is also the possibility that it might still get worse.

After four years of Trump-induced whiplash, it should come as no surprise that other nations have learned that ideological or even factual inconsistency is no longer considered a virtue. What’s true one day — or even hour — may not be so the next. Such is the case with Israeli assessments of Iranian nuclear capabilities. After over a decade of ringing the alarm bell over Iran’s nuclear capabilities, suddenly, Israel’s treating it like a back-burner issue.

As reported in Al-Monitor on Friday, Israel is trying to convince the Biden administration that there’s no urgency to reinitiating negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program because Iran is at least two years away from a bomb. The latest assessment, which comes via the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate, estimates that from the moment Iran moves to increase uranium enrichment to 90% levels, it will require two years to build a nuclear bomb. This timeline stands in stark contrast to the one given by American Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who on January 31 said in an interview that Iran just a few months away from being able to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon.

While it’s worth noting, as the Israelis did, that the IDF assessment concerns a functioning nuclear weapon, while Blinken was talking purely about the material necessary for producing a bomb, this distinction is beside the point.

The IDF’s assessment may be technically accurate, but the political recommendation attached to it is false. The plea for patience flies in the face of nearly all Israeli messaging on the Iranian threat for a better part of a decade. Instead, they are proposing a dubious and disingenuous “wait-and-see” style approach that urges Biden to maintain all the destructive policies of his predecessor, presumably because they are working.

And for Israel, they are. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, already anxious about his standing in the eyes of the new American administration, desperately wants to maintain the Trump administration’s “achievements” vis-a-vis Iran, including the degradation of the JCPOA and a return to aggressive economic sanctions. The specter of a dangerous Iran has also facilitated a realignment in Middle Eastern political and security relationships, giving Israel unprecedented acceptance among Arab states. Quick restoration of the deal would render four years of hard work to isolate and weaken Iran merely a temporary victory. More concerning to Netanyahu, it would have the potential to damage his image as shrewd statesman and protector of the realm in the eyes of some voters ahead of an upcoming general election (Israel’s fourth in less than two years).

The timing of this tonal shift surely also takes into consideration the upcoming Iranian presidential election scheduled for this summer. With Hassan Rouhani’s moderate/reformist coalition administration in the late stages of lame-duckitude, there isn’t enough political capital left to achieve a breakthrough without American support. It’s still a little too early to tell in which direction the political winds will blow the next Iranian government, but most indications seem to point toward a pendulum swing back toward the hardliners, who have little or no interest in diplomacy with the West. Absent a breakthrough in the dying embers of the Rouhani administration, supporters of a renewed deal will not have much to offer voters come June.

I feel like a broken record saying it, but the window of opportunity for Biden to gain a foothold in Iranian diplomacy is closing quickly. It took several years of pre-negotiations, negotiations, memoranda of understanding, preliminary agreements, and then more negotiations just to arrive at the final version of the JCPOA. Biden has four months. The Israelis are clearly playing to run out the clock on the current Iranian administration, hoping that the next one will kill off diplomacy for good and cement in place the current state of open hostility and borderline military conflict.

One could easily construct a metaphor here comparing the Israeli recommendation to wait to deciding to put off medical treatment for a deadly disease. In truth, Biden’s task is far more challenging. To succeed, he’ll need to resurrect the Iran Deal — and with it, Iran-U.S. relations — from the dead.

In a move that absolutely everyone should have seen coming, the Biden administration and Iran are settling into a standoff over the restoration of the Iran nuclear deal.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke about the fate of the erstwhile agreement in his first press conference following his Senate confirmation. In response to a question about Iran’s demand that the United States lift sanctions prior to Iran coming back into compliance, Blinken responded that the Biden administration has been “very clear” in its position that Iran must first resume compliance before the United States does the same. Once there, the two sides can use that as a “platform to build…what we called a longer and stronger agreement and to deal with a number of other issues that are deeply problematic to in the relationship to Iran.” Blinken admitted that we are still a “long ways” from that point.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif responded to Blinken’s statement on Twitter with a “reality check” for the new Secretary of State. Zarif reaffirmed the Iranian position that since the United States was the first to violate the JCPOA — among other sins — it is incumbent on the Americans to take the first step back to the deal. Zarif didn’t mention anything about Blinken’s proposed “other issues,” which probably means Iran’s involvement in regional conflicts like Syria and its missile program, but past statements indicate those are both nonstarters.

Reality check for @SecBlinken:
The US
-violated JCPOA
-blocked food/medicine to Iranians
-punished adherence to UNSCR 2231
Throughout that sordid mess, Iran
-abided by JCPOA
-only took foreseen remedial measures
Now, who should take 1st step?
Never forget Trump's maximum failure.

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) January 28, 2021

Viewing Blinken’s press conference through a pair of heavily rose-tinted glasses, one could make an argument that his statement represents the first awkward steps toward a return to diplomacy, a first-move position meant to anchor the negotiation on favorable terms before sitting down to seek a suitable compromise. In an ideal world, the Biden administration veterans of the Obama era negotiations — of which there are many — have already taken steps to set up a backchannel with some of their old contacts. This is impossible to know from a non-insider’s perspective, but judging solely on the public diplomacy, the rhetoric does not seem promising. To Iranian ears, Blinken’s response sounds all too familiar: American duplicity shrouded in accusation, and a demand that Iran should bear the burden for cleaning up a mess not of its own making.

When, or perhaps if, negotiations do resume under the Biden administration, the terms of the discussion will need to focus as much on Iran’s saving-face as they will the nuts and bolts of nuclear capabilities and sanctions. The ease with which Donald Trump first abandoned and then degraded the original deal has been a millstone around the necks of Iranian politicians who championed diplomacy as a means of problem-solving and national improvement. In particular, the destruction of the deal has harmed President Hassan Rouhani’s standing within Iranian political circles and, by extension, those of the moderate-reformist camp.

As the faces of the nuclear deal in Iran, Rouhani and Zarif continue to suffer near-constant ridicule from hardliner opponents for their gullibility in placing any faith in the Americans to keep their word. Overcoming that level of animosity and suspicion will be a tremendous hurdle to clear with the limited political capital afforded a lame duck president in his final few months in office. With elections looming in June, each day spent on the formalities of strategic posturing is a day wasted toward rebuilding some semblance of constructive engagement with Tehran before a new administration takes over. The early conventional wisdom among Iran-watchers is that the next president is likely to be at least somewhat to the right of Rouhani, and therefore less amenable to negotiating a second deal with the United States.

For Biden to achieve his goals on Iran, he will have to acknowledge the mistakes of his predecessors. Here, he has a small built-in advantage given who his immediate predecessor was. Still, it will also mean taking responsibility for the country’s past transgressions in a way few, if any, American presidents ever have before. Iranians have a long memory of American misdeeds, dating back to the 1953 coup, which still plays a significant role in Iranian political rhetoric. Iranians remember President George H. W. Bush’s refusal to apologize for the US Navy’s downing of an Iranian civilian airliner; they still recall American complicity with Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq War; and they most certainly are aware of their inclusion in the infamous “Axis of Evil Speech.” To many Iranians, Trump was less an aberration than a continuation of a harshly unfair and unjust American Iran policy.

To change this view, Biden will have to be different, but more importantly, he’ll have to be fast.

Once again, it’s been a while since my last update to this blog, but 2020 has provided more than enough distractions for everyone. As if to prove that point, I’m editing this post on my phone from a parking lot outside an urgent care center as I wait for the results of a COVID test. (Fortunately, the test came back negative.)

Another hallmark of 2020 has been the ongoing series of attacks targeting Iran and its officials over the past several months. In yet another incident, Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was assassinated outside of Tehran on Friday afternoon. Details of the assassination are still murky, although it appears to be a professional effort. We’ll learn more in the coming days and weeks as more information comes to light.

The assassination follows on the heels of another killing of an Iranian official, Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani, back in January of this year. While the U.S. quickly claimed credit for that attack, no one has yet done so for this one.

Iran, as ever, is reflexively casting blame on Israel. No hard evidence exists yet in support of this theory, but there is good reason to suspect its veracity. Fakhrizadeh is far from an anonymous bit player in Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Frequently referred to as the “father of the Iranian nuclear program” (or, more problematically, as the father of the “Iranian bomb,” which doesn’t exist), Fakhrizadeh has long been on the Israelis’ radar as a possible target for assassination. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu singled him out by name in his highly-publicized “briefing” following an Israeli raid on a nuclear research archive in Tehran in 2018. In that presentation, which, notably, was conducted in English for a crowd of global press, Netanyahu identified Fakhrizadeh as the head of Iran’s “Project Amad,” a research program that conducted preliminary investigations into the possibility of building a nuclear weapon. He told his audience to “remember that name.”

Not for nothing, assassination has long been part of the Israeli arsenal. So much so that Israeli investigative journalist Ronan Bergman recently published a 784-page book on the subject.

Like all things in modern politics and life, how you interpret this attack is closely correlated with your position on the political spectrum. The right-wing/neoconservative crowd is celebrating Fakhrizadeh’s death as yet another triumph in the long shadow war against Iran. Meanwhile, most of the center and the entirety of the left are calling this an unjustified act of aggression with little impact on the Iranian nuclear program itself. Far from it, these critics note that the main result of this attack will be the hamstringing of diplomatic efforts in the coming months.

Surely, this was the point. Both outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump and Netanyahu are wholly invested in scuttling the idea of negotiations over a return to the JCPOA (or anything else) before they can begin. Netanyahu needs a continued crisis with Iran to distract from his own political woes, namely the ongoing corruption trials, while Trump desperately wants to salt the earth for the incoming Biden administration.

There are additional strategic considerations at play for Israel. Netanyahu has already used the Iran threat to improve Israel’s relations with regional Arab states, including normalizing ties with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. In doing so, he has achieved what’s being hailed as a “diplomatic breakthrough” without even a meaningful attempt at addressing the Palestinian question. The enemy-of-my-enemy thinking is so persuasive, in fact, that even the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is rumored to be flirting with Israel over the possibility of normalization. Netanyahu not-so-secretly met with Saudi crown prince (and de facto ruler) Mohammad Bin Salman shortly after Biden’s election, although the Saudis are currently denying that this meeting took place. Rumors of unofficial collaborations between Israeli and Saudi intelligence and military officials have been an open secret for years.

For Tehran, the only question now is how to respond. In the short run, Iran has no interest in provoking a wider conflict with Israel, the United States, or any of its Arab rivals. As I’ve written before, the Iranians can read a calendar, and they know that a new administration is taking office in less than two months. Despite what many Iranian officials have said about not seeing any difference between Trump and Biden, they are keenly aware of the significance of a Biden victory as a pathway out of the hole they find themselves in.

Tehran will feel the need to respond militarily, as they did with the Soleimani attack, if only to save face. Iranian leadership is understandably shaken after enduring a year of sabotage and assassination without bringing any of the culprits to account. Still, it would be unlike Iran to lash out in a hasty or emotional manner just to even the score. As with the Soleimani reprisal, whatever action they take will likely be carefully measured in an attempt to limit the justification for further escalation.

In the long run, this assassination — and, presumably, any additional provocations that occur between now and January 20, 2021 — will bolster arguments in Iran against a return to negotiations, nuclear or otherwise, with the United States. Early indications suggest that the hardliners are out for blood. Saturday’s headline in the hardline paper Kayhan read, “The Zionists should expect an eye for an eye.” Vatan Emrooz, another hardline outlet, ran a critical retrospective on the “costs” of the Rouhani administration alongside the requisite call for retaliation for Fakhrizadeh’s killing. The timing of that retrospective hardly feels coincidental.

Tomorrow's front pages in #Iran:

Keyhan warns Israel to "expect" retaliation as it vows "an eye for an eye". Vatan-e Emruz adds: "If we don't attack, they'll strike."

IRGC-linked Javan laments the assassination of "yet another scientist". Hemayat says "people demand vengeance". pic.twitter.com/tbsmjdlFSl

— Kian Sharifi (@KianSharifi) November 27, 2020

The internal turmoil in Iran will make Biden’s job more challenging as he takes office in January. The veteran diplomats filling his administration’s upper ranks, many of whom, such as national security advisor nominee Jake Sullivan, were deeply involved in the original JCPOA negotiations, will prove a critical asset. But experience or personal relationships alone will not be sufficient to clear this hurdle. Biden will need to be willing to make some real concessions to Iran, including publicly acknowledging past mistakes, to jumpstart the process again.

This public accounting will need to be more comprehensive than merely a condemnation of his predecessor. Even before Trump’s victory in 2016, the failure of the JCPOA to deliver any kind of substantive benefit for the Iranian population had already left an indelible mark on the rapprochement narrative in Tehran. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani overcame this during his reelection campaign in 2017 thanks in part to Trump’s hesitancy at the beginning of his term to scuttle the deal straight away, despite his promises on the campaign trail to do so. But the situation has changed considerably since then. Over two-and-a-half years of crippling economic sanctions and three high-profile assassinations (two taking place on Iranian soil) have eroded any semblance of trust or goodwill between Iran and the United States. It’s entirely possible, logical even, that both Iran’s leadership and its population will decide that a more confrontational approach is needed moving forward.

Biden will have to move quickly and aggressively to try to correct this course. As it stands, it’s almost certain the list of approved candidates for the 2021 Iranian presidential election will be overwhelmingly weighted in favor of the hardliners. If this year’s parliamentary elections are any indication of the country’s political trend, the results are likely to follow suit. With the elections scheduled for June, Biden and his team will have less than half a year to gain a foothold with their old contacts before a potentially new set of negotiators take over.

In the worst-case scenario, it may already be too late to salvage Iran relations. Tehran may decide that its best course of action involves an all out push for a nuclear weapon. Strategically, it’s hard to argue with that logic. One look at geopolitics reveals the difference in treatment between the nuclear haves and have nots. Regime leadership may decide that with no viable alternative paths, full nuclear weaponization may be their best insurance against increasingly aggressive attempts to remove them from power. After all, if you’re stuck in a hole with no way out, you may as well keep digging.

If you run a large Iranian industrial site or military base, now might be a good time to check your fire insurance policy. For the past several weeks, things have been mysteriously blowing up or catching fire throughout the country. By my count, there have been at least a dozen high-profile incidents at military, industrial, and nuclear facilities over the past three weeks, with more reports of inflammatory incidents popping up seemingly daily.

The explosive summer began with a massive blast at a military base on the outskirts of Tehran on June 25. Islamic Republic officials were quick to downplay the significance of the incident, claiming it was the result of a faulty gas tank. Subsequent investigations, however, suggested that the damage was far more severe than the military let on. When news broke that the facility was actually a primary base of operations for Iran’s ballistic missile production program, speculation over the possibility of sabotage began to emerge.

Those rumblings grew louder in the following weeks as more sites around the country reported unexpected catastrophes. On June 30, an explosion at a medical clinic in Tehran killed 19 people. On July 3 a huge fire broke out at a garden in Shiraz. On July 4, a power plant at a petrochemical plant in southwest Iran sprung a chlorine gas leak, while a transformer exploded at at a power plant in Ahwaz.

The most significant incident occurred on July 2 at the Natanz nuclear plant, one of Iran’s biggest nuclear facilities. A fire engulfed several buildings in the complex, including, it was later revealed, a centrifuge assembly workshop. Officials, once again, initially downplayed the event, but a spokesman for Iran’s atomic energy body later admitted that the fire caused “significant damage” to Iran’s centrifuge production capabilities. Analysts have suggested that the fire could set back Iran’s centrifuge production by as much as a year.

Although there have not been any explicit claims or accusations of responsibility from any credible actors, it beggars belief that Iran, unlucky as it has been in recent years, would suddenly become the explosive embodiment of Murphy’s Law without a little outside help. After all, it’s not the first time that one of their nuclear site has unexpectedly blown up.

Media speculation about the potential culprit(s) quickly focused on the usual suspects, Israel and the United States. Such speculation is, of course, standard practice when dealing with the Islamic Republic, albeit with good reason. Israel and the United States partnered on the late 2000s cyber sabotage Olympic Games program, better known as Stuxnet, and both the Netanyahu and Trump administrations have been vociferous in their opposition to Iran’s nuclear program.

Iran, meanwhile, has held back on pointing the finger too directly at its foreign adversaries, preferring instead to portray the incidents mainly as a series of unfortunate accidents. This reaction, too, was predictable, given that any accusations of foreign interference would carry with it an embarrassing admission of failure on the part of Iran’s intelligence and security services. The continuing explosions, however, have recently made the believability of this stance increasingly untenable, provoking soft accusations of blame. Iran’s state news agency, IRNA, said that the Natanz explosion might have been the result of “hostile countries, especially the Zionist regime and the US.”

Tellingly, IRGC Quds Force commander Esmail Ghaani issued a statement on July 14 in which he implied that a recent fire on a US Navy ship in San Diego was somehow connected to the recent spate of fires in Iran, calling the Navy fire “divine punishment” for Washington’s “crimes.” Most observers seem to have written off Ghaani’s statement as a desperate attempt to save face.

For the moment, it seems safe to assume that there is an element of sabotage taking place In Iran, and that agents of the United States or Israel are most likely involved. Still, the more relevant and interesting question isn’t Who?” it’s “Why?” What, if anything, are they accomplishing with their campaign?

In terms of degrading Iran’s technological progress, it’s difficult to say. Expert statements about delays in Iran’s nuclear program are, at best, estimations based on scant evidence. Iran has publicly acknowledged that it has progressed beyond the limits set by the JCPOA, also known as the Iran nuclear deal, in response to the United States’ violation of that deal and the reimposition of economic sanctions, but how far it has gone in secret beyond that remains unknown. Last month, European officials joined the United States in passing a resolution at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) accusing Iran of hiding suspected nuclear activity, but again, details were scarce. The statement ran only one page and expressed “serious concern” about “possible undeclared nuclear material and nuclear related activities.” (As always, it’s worth noting that Iran had a perfect record of compliance with the JCPOA prior to the United States’ withdrawal in 2018, according to international inspectors.)

Strategically, a sustained sabotage campaign against Iranian facilities will not fundamentally weaken either Iran’s standing in the region or the regime’s overall stability. Certainly, Iran’s failure to stem the tide of explosions exposes serious flaws in its domestic security and intelligence apparatuses. But Iran’s broader influence depends far more on low tech military and intelligence operations in neighboring countries than it does on nuclear capabilities or advanced weaponry.

Similarly, mysterious explosions that carry the vague scent of foreign interference aren’t going to spur widespread protests against the regime, much less a revolution. (The regime’s own missteps are much more likely to cause that in the short term.) If anything, the mere suspicion that outside powers are, once again, meddling in Iranian affairs will only serve to further harden popular opinion against future Western overtures.

What we ultimately have here is a classic chicken-egg scenario. Are the attempts at sabotage the result of a hidden nuclear program, or does Iran need to hide its nuclear activities because anything it declares publicly will inevitably become the target of sabotage? Iran hawks will no doubt seek to portray recent events as proof that Iran is hiding a program more nefarious than its public declarations let on, but it is hard to see how Iran has any strategic choice other than to obscure its activities, particularly when even its compliance with an internationally recognized diplomatic agreement is portrayed as a facade masking sinister intent.

Whatever the answer, it is highly dubious that a scattered sabotage campaign will convince the Iranians to abandon their nuclear ambitions, whatever they may be. On the contrary, it’s more likely to drive any future activities deeper underground, and it will make a return to the negotiating table even more challenging than it already is. With Rouhani’s moderate government increasingly marginalized and hardliners on the rise, the rift between Iran and the West will only expand in the coming months. In the worst case scenario, Iran could reach the conclusion that the only way out of their nuclear hole is to dig in deeper.

As ever, though, the Iranians can still read a calendar, and they still have November 3, 2020 marked on theirs. They can also read a poll, and they know how grim Trump’s numbers are at present. While the chaos of the last four years has surely degraded their trust in the United States writ large, the Iranians know that a Biden victory will at the very least ease some of the pressure. They also know that the goal of the sabotage campaign — assuming there is one — is to provoke an aggressive response that will trigger a wider conflict, perhaps one that will justify military action by the United States, Israel, or both. The Iranians won’t want to give them the satisfaction. Instead, they are more likely to try to wait it out and hope that this strategy doesn’t blow up in their face.

They say turnabout is fair play.

The Islamic Republic, so frequently a punching bag for its own political unrest and human rights abuses, is reveling in being on the other side of the equation for once. As cities across the United States descended into chaos following the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd last week, Iranian officials and media highlighted the protests and brutal police response as signs of the United States’ imminent unraveling. It was, in many ways, a bizarre reflection of the way American media and politicians (from both parties) have sought to portray Iran following past spasms of political protest and government violence.

Kayhan, Iran’s most prominent hardline media outlet and whose publisher, Hossein Shariatmadari, is a direct appointee of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, ran images from the protests at the top of their front page for the majority of the past week. On May 25, it published the photo of Floyd with his neck pinned beneath Officer Derek Chauvin’s knee alongside the headline, “‘I can’t breathe’ — The last words of the latest black victim in the Wild West.”

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It was a similar story over on Twitter, where various Islamic Republic officials condemned the U.S. response and expressed solidarity with black Americans by using the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. A recently created account for the Supreme Leader’s website has spent the last few days tweeting out slickly produced videos highlighting America’s long and ugly history of racial discrimination. In one, a series of clips of American police brutality ends with the words “Human Rights American Style” displayed across the screen. Another compares American police to ISIS. “Both of them are the same,” Khamenei says in a voiceover set against dramatically swelling music.

In his critiques, Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has been slightly more diplomatic. On May 1, he tweeted a “markup” of a June 2018 press release from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about Iranian protests, altering it to apply to the recent American unrest. The foreign ministry spokesman, Abbas Mousavi, tweeted out the video of Chauvin killing Floyd along with the caption, “Brutal killing of #GeorgeFloyd by Minneapolis’ white man in uniform in cold blood is a harrowing demonstration of systematic racism and white supremacism glorified by the current administration.”

In reality, the George Floyd protests will not fundamentally alter the status quo in American-Iranian relations, which are and will remain abysmal as long as Trump is in office. It won’t make negotiations between Iran and the U.S. any more likely, despite the latest State Department ultimatum warning Iran that it must choose between sitting down with the Trump administration or managing an economic collapse. If anything, Trump’s flagging poll numbers amidst the civil unrest and the botched response to the coronavirus crisis will only serve to harden Tehran’s will to holdout through the November presidential election, where a Biden victory may give Iran a glimmer of hope of meaningful sanctions relief.

What the protests and the authorities’ response, including Trump’s own call to “dominate” the protesters, do achieve is to allow Iran to claim the moral high ground, at least temporarily. However disingenuous and self-serving Iranian criticisms of U.S. policing and racial injustice might be — especially when one considers Tehran’s own lengthy and horrific human rights record — the present chaos in the streets helps Iran muddy the waters in the perpetual contest for domestic and international public opinion. The Iranian government is not only expressing solidarity with social movements like Black Lives Matter; they are also implicitly positioning themselves as BLM’s international parallel: unfair victims of an unjust, oppressive, and vindictive American government.

At the very least, the Trump administration’s response to the protests, which has included the tear gassing of peaceful protesters outside the White House, will take the sting out of any potential condemnations that will follow the next, inevitable round of popular protests in Iran. After all, how is it possible to make a credible call for regime change by pointing to masses of people in the streets when the very same thing is happening right outside your own front door?

Former CIA analysts who monitored protests abroad have expressed concern about the similarities between the way foreign autocrats manage anti-government protests and how Donald Trump has reacted over this past week. It’s not difficult to see why. The characteristics of the American government response — defiant rhetoric, accusations of outside agitators, and state-sanctioned violence — is a crystalline reflection of how despotisms handle mass dissent against their regimes. When seen in that light, the Iranian reaction makes a lot of sense. Iran is looking in the mirror right now, and it likes what it sees.