Iran is feeling emboldened

After the cautious optimism of the early rounds of US-Iran talks, and Donald Trump’s Gulf roadshow, the US government has claimed that Israel is preparing for a possible strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, a parallel piece of political theatre to the ongoing talks between US and Iranian negotiators. 

This is nothing new. B-52 bombers and Israeli fighter jets have been rehearsing this for the past few months, and many years before that. This is some very public cold water being poured on the talks, just as they set to advance to the complicated bit. Aware that there is every chance the talks may not progress beyond these thorny rounds, both sides are preparing the ground for that failure. Getting the rhetorical punches in before the real ones begin, perhaps. 

On the Iranian side, yesterday, Ayatollah Khamenei sent his supporters into a performative frenzy of chanting “Death to America, Death to England, Death to Israel,” as his Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and his pals, whose political future really hangs on a successful deal, watched on nervously. Khamenei, in full stride, was unambiguous in stating that uranium enrichment was a right for the Iranian people and not an issue on which the US could ever dictate terms. A source in Iran expressed wearied frustration at the Supreme Leader’s comments, worried at the damage they would obviously cause to the chances of a successful outcome in the talks. And as Trump and Steve Witkoff have said repeatedly, the alternative to successful talks are bunker busters smashing into Iranian nuclear facilities.

And although Tehran can’t afford to call Israel’s bluff (and nor can Washington), the Islamic Republic has undoubtedly been buoyed by the clear evidence that Trump and Netanyahu have appeared to diverge on Iran and Yemen. Yet Tehran is buoyed too, by the creeping sense that Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, and its attempt to starve a whole people, is slowly turning the West against Netanyahu, a phenomenon from which the Islamic Republic hopes to gain in its permanent struggle to be the poster boy for the world’s oppressed Muslims (even as it imprisons and executes Muslims at home and slaughters them in Syria). Khamenei’s protestations are as much a sop to Tehran’s hardliners as they are what remains of the Axis of Resistance, for whom a deal with the US would be remarkably light on resistance.

Realistically, however Israel can’t afford to open another front in its forever wars against the region’s Muslims. It simply doesn’t have the support in Washington, Europe or at home. Not to mention Russian and Chinese hostility to any Israeli action that threatens their good relations with the Islamic Republic.

But despite all this familiar saber rattling, the fact remains that Washington wants a deal, and so does Tehran. But not at any cost. There is a very real risk that the talks fall apart due to decades of hostility and suspicion and some very technical and complex negotiations ahead, but for now there is still hope that sensible voices can prevail and something approaching a workable deal can be hashed out in Rome over the weekend. The noise is all part of the negotiations.