This week was supposed to be Ebrahim Raisi’s week to shine.
And the new president of Iran, endorsed by Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday and sworn in before the Iranian parliament on Thursday, did rate sustained global coverage and officials from 70 countries attending the ceremonies.
But there was also an Israeli counter strike, the second major move by the still relatively new foreign policy troika of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and Defense Minister Benny Gantz.
Who had achieved a better position by the end of the week?
It depends.
There are at least three interwoven games going on at once: the nuclear game, the terror game and the regional game.
Regarding the nuclear game, Raisi’s ascendance to the presidency had changed the rules even before his June 18 election.
A deal seemed almost inevitable after multiple rounds of negotiations in Vienna in April and May between Washington, Tehran and world powers – until they fell off a cliff.
The Islamic Republic is spooked both by the insistence of US President Joe Biden’s administration on a return to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action being contingent on laying the basis for a later round of negotiation to “lengthen and strengthen” the deal.
They are also spooked by the possibility that a return to the JCPOA will not help them sufficiently escape from their current economic crisis. This was a problem they had even before former US president Donald Trump’s administration pulled out of the deal in May 2018.
The two main reasons were because the JCPOA never removed non-nuclear sanctions and because of Western investors’ suspicion of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps corruption and control of many Iranian businesses.
Khamenei and Raisi made it clear in their speeches on Tuesday and Thursday that they think having a new and more threatening face will help them bully the EU and the US into new nuclear concessions.
Raisi’s strategy will be continued advancement on the 60% uranium enrichment front, continued blocking of IAEA inspectors from key information (dating back to May 24) and trying to promote a resistance economy with support from China, Russia and others.
On the sidelines of his inauguration, Iranian media reported that he told Russian officials, “we are pleased with Russia’s economic progress and growth towards self-reliance and we are determined to implement the policies of Economy of Resistance to promote resilience to economic shocks, especially against the oppressive sanctions of the United States and Europe.”
The Iranian leader added: “Sanctions against Iran and Russia were imposed with the aim of weakening our countries, but we will overcome these obstacles together to promote interactions and progress.”
His intentions and perception of not only the US, but also Europe, could not be clearer.
Though Raisi may hope this aggressive posture will fundamentally shift Washington’s calculations of what it can stomach, he will not get far on this path.
Some of the US negotiators, like Rob Malley, might have been willing to concede more if they were calling the shots. But Biden and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken will not concede anything beyond the JCPOA.
Nor will they drop the idea of follow-on negotiations – whether or not those negotiations have any chance of success (most Israelis are skeptical.)
Put simply, if Biden maintains the sanctions, and he will, Chinese and Russian support plus some other countries is only sufficient to survive on an economic respirator. It is insufficient to help Tehran escape its current extreme economic instability.
ISRAEL ALSO made it clear this week, and with an operation attributed to Jerusalem in June at the Karaj nuclear facility, that its new government will act aggressively on both the military and diplomatic fronts.
If Raisi thought that upping Iran’s terror game on the high seas with multiple attacks on Israeli or US-allied ships would scare Washington into submission, he miscalculated.
His miscalculation rallied Israel and some of the usually quiet Europeans to point the finger at Iran and make some threats about responding.
None of this will completely shift the US and EU into abandoning the JCPOA model no matter how much Jerusalem desires this outcome. But it did interrupt Raisi’s coronation and expose that Iran under his leadership has some of the same weaknesses as before.
His “new face” magic that Khamenei kept lauding will only go so far.
These same limits are true about the regional game.
In his first official meetings with Iraqi officials on the sidelines of his inauguration, he tried to draw Iraq into conflict with the US, as he had successfully done with Russia, Venezuela and others.
But Iraq, as close as it is to Iran and even as it seeks an end to US active military operations, wants to maintain an alliance with and a variety of forms of assistance from Washington.
Hezbollah provoked Israel this week and Hamas provoked it in May.
This could be another sign of Raisi’s closeness to the IRGC and that the group’s Quds Force and proxies may feel empowered to take greater risks against Israel in the near term.
But if every time they take a risk, they get a bloodier nose in return from the Jewish state, how long will their fantasyland hope last that Raisi can change the rules of the game?
There is one way that the Islamic Republic under Raisi could change the rules of the game.
The Biden team will not just crack and give new concessions for nothing.
Ye, the US would like nothing more than to broaden the negotiating parameters.
If Iran would put more issues, like ballistic missiles and some of its regional behavior on the table, the Biden team would start entertaining lifting all sanctions, even non-nuclear ones.
This seems like a wildly unlikely scenario right now, with military intervention scenarios looking more likely.
But at the end of the day, Raisi works for Khamenei. Khamenei hates the West and vowed never to make certain JCPOA concessions and then made them anyway.
Trump is gone and Raisi is in office. This was the hand Khamenei wanted to be dealt.
Still, if in a few months, Raisi’s new face and aggressiveness has not changed the game, Iran may find its way back to the negotiating table and this week’s events may become a forgotten footnote.