Dogma will be further eclipsed by everyday worries, like making money and doing business.
The further the 1979 revolution recedes, the more normal Iran will tend to become. And thirdly-and most important-that the world has time on its side. Secondly, that power in Iran moves between factions, just as in America, so any deal must be future-proofed against the day when a hardliner returns to the presidency. What does this mean for a nuclear deal? For a start, that on balance Iran will act pragmatically, in what it sees as its own interests, rather than out of a messianic desire to pull down the world order, and is therefore worth talking to. Mr Rohani belongs to the establishment, naturally, but it says a lot about today’s Iran that his cabinet contains more doctorates from American universities than Barack Obama’s.
That is why last year Iran elected a president, Hassan Rohani, who wants to open up to the world and who has reined in the hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Although this hardly amounts to democracy, it is a political marketplace and, as Mr Ahmadinejad discovered, policies that tack away from the consensus do not last. They form a confusing and ever-shifting pattern of competing factions and coalitions. But his role is to adjudicate between the claims of an elite made up of thousands of politicians, clerics, generals, academics and business people. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has the last word. Iran is not a straightforward dictatorship. As a caliphate takes root in Iraq and Syria, here is one Islamic state where religion is in retreat. In Qom, the religious capital, seminaries are dwarfed by a vast shopping mall. The muezzins’ call to prayer is heard less often, because people complain about the noise. With the passing of time, the mosques have started to empty. The traditional religious society that the mullahs dreamt of has receded. The disastrous presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the failed Green revolution-which sought to topple him in 2009-and the chaotic Arab spring have for the moment discredited radical politics and boosted pragmatic centrists. Over half of Iranians go to university, up from a third five years ago. As people have moved from their villages to the cities they have got richer and acquired a taste for consumer goods and Western technology. Our special report in this issue describes a country whose revolutionary fire has been extinguished.
Thirty-five years have passed since a senior American official last visited Iran. Barack Obama, America’s president, has been condemned for even talking to such a pariah. It is a dictatorship bent on exporting revolution and prey to a dangerous, millenarian Islam that might just be irrational enough to welcome a nuclear apocalypse. His colleague at the UN’s nuclear agency recently complained that Iran is failing to come clean about its nuclear research-part of a litany of evasion and deceit.īad as that is, however, Western denunciation casts Iran in an almost uniquely grim light. On Saturday a woman was hanged for killing the man she accused of molesting her, shortly before a UN envoy condemned a surge in executions and the treatment of Iran’s women. They treat opponents at home with cruelty and injustice. Its politicians routinely deny Israel’s right to exist. It finances terrorists and militias in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories and backs the murderous regime of Bashar Assad in Syria. A better understanding of the country would help the talks reach a comprehensive settlement-or, at least, avoid a catastrophic collapse. One reason why the relationship is so poisonous is that popular Western views of Iran are out of date to the point of caricature. The gap would be easier to close if Iran and America trusted each other. The two sides cannot agree on how many centrifuges Iran should be able to use to enrich uranium, how long an agreement should last, or how fast to lift sanctions. Much of the focus is on the mechanics of a deal (see article).
WE. THE REVOLUTION PLUS
Plenty still separates Iran and, on the other side, the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (known as the P5+1). If the talks break down, atomic weapons could proliferate in the Middle East or, in a bid to stop Iran, America or Israel could launch a military attack on its infrastructure. Even now, after 12 years of sporadic argument, Iran insists that it wants civilian nuclear power and not a bomb. TALKS to curb Iran’s nuclear programme have less than a month to run.
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