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Iran v America: what's behind the feud?
- The outlook anticipates President Biden will attempt to ease decades of tension and rejoin the JCPOA, though this path remains highly uncertain due to the 2021 election of a hardline Iranian president who is expected to be less willing to negotiate.
- Historical analysis predicts that the Iranian political elite, hardened by an eight-year war with Iraq beginning in the late 1970s and proxy conflicts in Lebanon during the 1980s and 1990s, maintains a security-minded outlook that prioritizes asymmetrical warfare and proxy groups like Hezbollah over direct military confrontation with the US or Israel.
- Economic pressures from sanctions on oil exports, which previously crippled the economy and forced negotiations in 2015, are expected to push leaders to the table again, yet the 2018 withdrawal of the US from the JCPOA under President Trump's "maximum pressure" policy has convinced hardliners that they cannot trust American commitments.
- While Westernizing reforms by the Shah were initially intended to create a pro-Western buffer against the Soviet Union, his corruption and crackdown on dissent led to a 1979 revolution where Ayatollah Khomeini returned in February 1979, followed by a 444-day hostage crisis that traumatized the American political establishment and contributed to the failure of the Carter administration.
- Despite the potential for rapprochement given the cultural similarities between American and Iranian societies, current negotiations are hindered by maximalist demands from both sides, the 2019 acceleration of Iran's nuclear program from zero to nearly 20,000 centrifuges by 2013, and the fact that by the end of the Trump administration, Iran was closer to a bomb than at the start of the term.