The record of deception and concealment of Iran's leadership justifies the widespread mistrust that its current diplomatic charm offensive has aroused. Previous negotiations with the six world powers (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) have failed because of the refusal of Iran, led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, to agree on measures proving that they were really not intent on developing a nuclear bomb. During the presidential campaign that brought him to power in June of this year, President Hassan Rouhani hinted that he himself had played the make-believe card when he was the head of the Iranian delegation at international talks aimed at solving the standoff surrounding his country's nuclear program.
There are good reasons, therefore, to think that Iran's current diplomatic overtures may be one further gambit aimed at gaining time to develope a nuclear weapon.
And yet, given Iran's present economic woes and the ensuing social discontent, it would be a highly risky bet for the mullahs, and Khamenei in particular, to try to deceive yet again.
The outcome of last June's election proved that the gap is widening between Khamenei's hard-line conservatism and the Iranian public's expectations. Iranians overwhelmingly voted for Rouhani because, among the candidates allowed to run in that contest, he was regarded as the least close to Khamenei's conservative position. The mere fact that Rouhani defeated the Supreme Leader's chosen candidate is a sign that Khamenei's position may be in danger.
By their vote, Iranians demonstrated that they want and expect the new government to secure the lifting of the energy and banking sanctions that are damaging their country's economy. Thus, if Khamenei lays down too stringent limits on the concessions that Rouhani is allowed to offer or accept, and sanctions are maintained as a result of that intransigency, Khamenei's leading role in Iranian politics may suffer an additional blow.
Neither a majority of Iranians nor some segments of Iran's political elite seem to be willing to continue paying too high an economic price for the eventual development of a nuclear weapon. (According to one Gallup poll, only one-third of Iranians approve of weaponizing their country's nuclear program.)
With social malaise on the rise, the appeal of a nuclear program for military use may have lost much of its initial luster in the eyes of Iran's leadership. If the purpose is to shelter the mullahs' regime, it is far from certain that having the bomb would help to secure that objective. The main danger for the Iranian regime doesn't come from outside the country's frontiers, but from within. That danger has a name: mounting social discontent. And to counter that threat, weaponizing the nuclear program will be of little or no use.
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.