While the US-Israel contra-Iran drama seems to be in a deadlock, the overall objectives of the ill-starred campaign remain unachieved.
Somewhere under the rubble lies 60 kgs plus of uranium to become ten nuclear weapons at any moment Iran can collect itself. Ballistic missiles were eliminated, but keep coming, as painfully felt by the Gulf nations taken hostage between the warring parties. Proxies of Iran are alive and kicking and still taking their cue from Tehran. The forlorn Iranian people chafe under the same oppression they have known for 47 years.
It is becoming clear as daylight that this conflict has no military solution. More than that, it is also becoming clear that the Washington playbook of ruining Iran through sealing its ports is not a panacea, as the system can force people to accept a state of siege through propaganda and coercion. Iranians have learned to live with hardship through decades of sanctions. On top of that, Iranians are resourceful to a degree hard to imagine outside Iran, capable of ingenious homegrown solutions to make do with whatever they still have. Like Bolshevik Russia, they can manage on autarchy. Do not expect a hunger-driven popular uprising like 14 July 1789.
With significant segments of the country’s traditional elite physically eliminated, a new leadership has emerged in Iran that the outside world knows atrociously little about. Drawing up a reliable picture of the political landscape inside Iran at this moment is contentious at the very least, having to rely on Iranian media, regime-affiliated Iranian experts appearing in global media outlets, and the Western-based Iranian diaspora that provides news about what transpires inside Iran, pieced together from secret contacts through VPNs and other subterfuge. What comes through this guesswork is the probability that the newly minted leadership of the country is divided over the dilemma of how to respond to the pressure, military and economic, weighing down on the country. With hardly any income to rely upon, the regime faces the daunting prospect of introducing some form of war Communism with commodities and perhaps even food and energy made available through a ticket system, the Rial becoming barely worth more than the paper it is printed on.
No rosy prospects for the regime, even if it can keep the street under control. If the pro- and con- compromise currents inside Iran are indeed in conflict which we can assume with fairly significant certainty, it is in the interest of the world, more and more on the receiving end of the ongoing tug of war, to enhance a dialogue INSIDE Iran that may be conducive to a compromise settlement resulting in a Tehran giving up its belligerence and hegemonistic streak outside, and its repression inside.
To do that, feelers must be extended to the Iranian players rather than continuing to rely on well-intentioned but ultimately useless go-betweens.
The reasonable set of Iran’s remaining leaders, as highlighted by Qalibaf and Aragchi, should be informed that only their submission to realities both inside and outside will move things away from escalation and toward a negotiated settlement.
Such a settlement would accept the notion of a non-nuclear Iran at peace with its neighbors, with internationally guaranteed borders and sovereignty. It would rely on a quid pro quo, removing the threat of permanent aggression, directly or via proxy, from over the heads of Iran’s regional neighbors, Israel included. In return, sanctions would go. Only a balanced and equitable approach can produce a deal.
No deal could be complete without the systemic change that Iran needs to produce in order to finally and irreversibly move out of its past. The people of Iran deserve the liberty to choose what kind of polity they want to live in. Whether it is a religious state or a secular state, Jomhouri Islami or Jomhouri Irani. If the system is fairly convinced about the attractiveness of an Islamic state to the country’s population, it should have no misgivings about an internationally overseen plebiscite to decide. How the decision would be implemented should be left solely to the Iranian people. As with all similar fundamental changes to a state’s identity (should that be the verdict of the people), a general amnesty is a prerequisite many in Iran would find painful to accept, but it would be a price not too high for ending 75 years of dystopia.
An Iran founded on the will of its own people would be a partner the world could accept and trust to sort out all the thorny issues that will be the legacy of the current system.
Eastern Europe at the end of Communism has seen a series of transformations based on compromise between the incumbent power and the one the people have chosen through free and fair elections. These bloodless revolutions ended four decades of authoritarian rule and put an end to the Cold War, the nearest the world has ever gotten to mutually assured nuclear annihilation. Iran should gain heart from the experience of Eastern Europe that brought an end to both an unsustainable social model – Communism – and a nuclear confrontation that held the world hostage for over four decades. The Iranian people can replicate this transition should their leaders have the courage and the determination to provide them with a better future and simultaneously rid the world of the scourge of a system they themselves should acknowledge has reached a dead end.
Illusion? Maybe. There is certainly an alternative. Should war restart in lieu of a compromise, the current leaders of Iran must remember the fate of its two neighbors, who suffered the consequences of obstinacy, and they have still not emerged from their predicament as peaceful, prosperous nations. Iran should consider avoiding their fate.
