Tehran’s preferred negotiating tactic has long been escalation. While talks have been underway with the United States, the Islamic Republic downed a US Apache helicopter over the Strait of Hormuz and launched missiles at Israel from Iranian territory in defense of Hezbollah.
The new provocation is the first case of Iran striking Israel directly on behalf of a proxy and signals a new national security doctrine for the Islamic Republic. It’s uncertain how it will affect negotiations, accounts of which have not been promising.
Proposed agreements that focus on Iran’s nuclear ambitions and securing the Strait of Hormuz, but leave the regime’s missile arsenal, proxies, and its repression of the Iranian people unaddressed, fall short. Most importantly, signing a deal with Tehran after it violated the ceasefire even as talks are ongoing would mean negotiating without establishing deterrence.
Testing limits
The regime gradually tested the limits and violated the ceasefire with attacks on US assets in the region and laid mines in the Persian Gulf during negotiations. If Tehran secures an agreement under its current perception of power dynamics, it will conclude that escalation pays.
Washington envisions a limited, less-for-less agreement as a first step toward a more comprehensive deal. Under the reported framework, the United States would ease the naval blockade and grant sanctions waivers in exchange for the regime halting its attacks against the Strait, with negotiations over the highly enriched uranium stockpile deferred to a later phase.
Even “success” in the Strait of Hormuz would address only one manifestation of the problem. Reopening the chokehold does not eliminate the capabilities that made its closure possible. But even the potential deal’s narrow scope isn’t enough for Tehran: they insist on access to frozen funds before taking any steps of their own.
Negotiations on enrichment
The other challenge is dismantling the regime’s enrichment infrastructure. Adviser to the supreme leader and IRGC General Mohsen Rezaee declared that the Islamic Republic would neither abandon its capacity to enrich uranium nor surrender its existing stockpile.
Earlier, both the head and spokesman for parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee had said enrichment was not on the agenda for negotiations, a position echoed by Tehran’s Foreign Ministry. Religious authorities also stated enrichment and nuclear technology are part of the regime’s national identity and could not be negotiated away.
Tehran’s insistence on retaining enrichment capabilities is not new. The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action allowed the regime to preserve its enrichment infrastructure under temporary restrictions rather than dismantle it outright. As key limitations approached expiration, the agreement preserved the foundations of a nuclear program that could transition to weaponization.
Tehran is willing to negotiate over the Strait of Hormuz but not its enrichment capabilities because the former can be regained while the latter, once dismantled, would take years to rebuild. The infrastructure, expertise, and stockpiles underpinning the nuclear program cannot be quickly restored.
For a regime that has long cited Libya’s disarmament as a cautionary tale, relinquishing enrichment is fundamentally different from making temporary concessions elsewhere.
Remaining missile threat
An Islamic Republic stripped of its nuclear program but still capable of aggression is at best a partial victory. Tehran’s Islamist regime has enabled the killing of some 1,000 US personnel – not through nuclear weapons but via terror networks such as al-Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, Iraqi militias, and Hezbollah. Any sanctions relief in exchange for nuclear disarmament would inevitably finance this cycle of violence.
Even if the US somehow secures a deal that compels the regime to surrender its nuclear program, the missile threat remains. Washington has degraded Iran’s missile manufacturing infrastructure, but rebuilding it is only a matter of time as Iran describes missiles as the “primary retaliatory deterrent.”
For Israel, Arab states, and the US forces that endured barrages, the threat will only intensify if Tehran concludes it secured negotiations without Washington first establishing deterrence.
Loss for the Iranian people
The same institutions that threaten US forces, Israel, and regional allies are also responsible for repressing the Iranian people. The IRGC’s missile program, proxy networks, and internal security apparatus are not separate entities, but rather different components of the same system. Any agreement that addresses only one element leaves the broader structure intact.
The Iranian people stand to lose the most from any deal with the regime. Nearly 40,000 sacrificed their lives during the January uprising and were told on the first day of the conflict by US President Donald Trump that this was the help they had asked for.
The execution of dissidents, extrajudicial killings, and arrests have surged since the April ceasefire. This is not simply a human rights issue; it risks alienating the regime’s only existential threat. Iranians are the region’s most pro-American and pro-Israel population, and for them, the only path to lasting change runs through the end of the Islamic Republic.
Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, the regime has relied on its nuclear program, missiles, and proxies to deter external threats while using terror tactics to repress dissent at home as well.
Successive US administrations have attempted to either contain the Iran problem or to manage it through appeasement. Yet the regime’s strategies have not changed, despite Washington’s varying approaches.
The American miscalculation is that Tehran would ever give up the very tools that sustain the regime.■
Janatan Sayeh is the Iran analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, focused on Iranian domestic affairs and the Islamic Republic’s regional malign influence. Born and raised in Tehran, he held various research roles at the International Republican Institute, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the American Enterprise Institute.