Barack Obama’s Three Iranian Gambles

A compromise on Iran’s nuclear issue is now within reach. Of course, nothing is certain because issues which could make the whole deal collapse still need to be resolved, but an agreement between Iran and the major powers is now no longer unlikely for two reasons.

The first is that Barack Obama wants to end his mandate on a rapprochement between the United States and a country in ascendancy which was once one of its main allies; and above all, he wants to be able to put pressure on the Iranian armed forces to stabilize the Middle East, where he has no desire to put troops back on the ground. The second reason why a compromise is taking shape is because the Iranian leaders also need it, since their country is strangled by the economic sanctions to which it has been subjected, and without these sanctions, Iran could quickly assert itself as the main power in the Middle East, where it has already become an absolutely key player.

Reformers in Tehran want an agreement because they want to be able to modernize their country and increase its living standards, and because it’s on this mandate that Hassan Rouhani, one of these reformers, was elected to the Iranian presidency in June 2013. Conservatives, headed by the supreme leader, accept the necessity of a compromise because nuclear weapons can wait and Shiite Iran cannot continue to finance the development of its regional influence without recovering its financial situation.

Conservatives, reformers and the general population: All of Iran now aspires to have the sanctions lifted and, therefore, what other options would there be to a nuclear compromise on which the White House is working day and night?

Go and bomb Iranian nuclear sites like Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, wants to do without saying as much? In addition to the fact that such an operation would not be guaranteed to succeed because these sites are buried deep underground, this would create unpredictable dynamics and would only delay Iran’s access to nuclear weapons, for which it already has technological knowledge. This is not a rational option, and simply upholding sanctions is not much better either, since economic difficulties have never prevented the Islamic Republic from enriching its uranium and enhancing its missiles.

For Washington and Tehran, the right thing to do is to take the time needed to seek an agreement which has been frozen for 12 years, during which time Iran’s nuclear capacities have reached a level that requires at least a year to advance from the possibility of equipping itself with nuclear weapons to developing them effectively.

This is what American and Iranian negotiators are working on, but as eminently desirable as this is, this compromise would depend on a triple gamble.

Firstly, there would be no guarantee that several Sunni countries, notably Saudi Arabia and Turkey, would then take their own steps toward acquiring nuclear weapons out of fear that Shiite Iran would have them if this agreement falls apart. Taking Israel’s striking force into account, this would turn the Middle Eastern powder keg into a nuclear powder keg where there is no certainty whatsoever that the theory of dissuasion could last in the long term.

It’s also uncertain if lifting sanctions would strengthen Tehran’s reformative camp enough for Iran’s regional policy to become less unacceptable in the eyes of Sunni capitals and populations, when the country formerly known as Persia is already a dominant force in Libya through Hezbollah, in Yemen through the Shiite Houthis, and in Iraq and Syria through its military support of the regimes in power.

To the contrary, the Sunni world might consider that a rapprochement between the U.S. and Iran obliges it to stand up to the Shiites like never before — both against Iran itself and against its two allies, the regime in Damascus and Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as against all Shiites in the region, who make up majorities in Iraq and Bahrain and minorities in Saudi Arabia and Syria.

Instead of favoring regional stabilization, a rapprochement between the U.S. and Iran could increase the intensity of the battle under way between the two major religions of Islam, since the Sunnis may be anxious to see Iranian forces intervening in Iraq and Syria to a far greater extent than they are already doing.

Finally, it can in no way be said that the U.S.’s influence in the Middle East is still strong enough to lead Sunnis and Shiites toward a modus vivendi by keeping a balance of forces between the two camps. This is the third gamble, and France has so little belief in it that it has decided to strengthen the Sunnis against Iran by reinforcing the Libyan and Egyptian armies, both of which are bankrolled by Saudi Arabia. Nuclear compromise or not, the new wars in the Middle East have only just begun.