The Soviet experience comes to mind; the nuclear weapon didn't prevent the peoples of Eastern Europe from revolting and making the Soviet bloc crumble. Iran's protest movement of 2009 was repressed in blood and its leaders were sent to jail, but the malaise is latent and rising, and it is not the bomb that could defuse the foreseeable social explosion.
Tehran also cannot ignore that the eventual development of a nuclear weapon would automatically trigger nuclear proliferation in the region. Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt are natural candidates. For existential reasons, some if not all of these states may be willing to bypass their anti-Israel rhetoric and enter into a tactical, albeit undeclared, alliance with the Jewish State. In the final reckoning, Iran might not come out any stronger vis-à-vis its neighbors in a nuclearized Middle East than it is at present without the bomb.
For all these reasons, the conditions are ripe for a major foreign policy about-face in Tehran.
The case of 1970s Egypt, when Anwar Sadat switched alliances and orchestrated a rapprochement with the U.S., may throw light on what the present mood in Tehran may be, and where it may lead to.
The situation in today's Iran is certainly not identical to that of Egypt in the 1970s, but some distinct similarities indeed exist. As in Egypt then, the Iranian economy has reached a breaking point. And as in Egypt then, the survival of the Iranian regime requires the fresh economic oxygen that only a substantial lessening of tensions with the West, and in particular with the U.S., can bring about.
For a U-turn in Iran's foreign policy to take place, however, the international community needs to keep the pressure on Tehran. That means maintaining sanctions until Iran accepts nuclear concessions under international scrutiny, including camera surveillance and surprise UN inspections at nuclear facilities.
Iran's economic predicament is the main card at the disposal of the international community. Appeasement, in the form of a premature softening of sanctions, would only embolden the hard-liners who are doggedly determined to develop a nuclear weapon. Indeed, why would Iran abandon its nuclear program if sanctions are eased and the country's economy begins to breathe again?
What pushed Egypt's Sadat to make a foreign policy volte-face was not political appeasement but economic exhaustion. The same applies today to Rouhani and Iran.
