Those unfamiliar with the tactics of the Iranian Regime may be breathing a sigh of relief at the idea that there will be no war, but there was never any real danger of a traditional military conflict between the Gulf State and the country that it refers to as the “Great Satan”.
Iran’s military is nowhere near strong enough to engage in all- out war with the US or almost any other county. That’s why the Iranian Regime focuses on funding proxy militias and cyber hackers to attack its enemies while keeping its hands clean, which limits the attacks that could be launched back at Iran.
Now that we’ve addressed that, let’s move onto the idea that Iran will not negotiate with the US.
Khamenei has said outright that Iran will not come back to the negotiating table, as the US wanted, which implies that the returning US sanctions on Iran will not help to bring about a new deal with the Iranian Regime to tackle all of the mullah’s malign activities i.e. sponsorship of terrorism, threats against other sovereign countries, and interference in affairs of other countries in the Middle East.
But this doesn’t mean that the West should give in, remove the sanctions, and go back to the appeasement policy that has failed to bring any sort of change over the past 40 years. Actually, the West should support sanctions rather than preserve a deeply flawed nuclear deal that is already in tatters.
This sanctions relief actually empowered the Iranian Regime and its brutal revolutionary guard to further abuse the Iranian people and other innocents throughout the Middle East. The Iranian Regime is not a normal government that can be coaxed into modifying its behaviour; it’s a band of criminals, mobsters, and mass-murderers. Therefore, the West should not hope that a trading relationship will bring about a reformed Iran. Commercial interests should never come above human rights and world peace.
Roger Boyes wrote in The Times: “Changing Iran’s behaviour abroad will eventually create the conditions for regime change at home. The guards, the corrupt heart of a clerical dictatorship, will end up at each other’s throats. They will end up as a mere blip in the great span of Persian history, remembered only for their savagery and their greed.”
