By Network Partner James LeGrice of London-based Insight Public Affairs

 A settlement on Iran’s nuclear programme is a far more realistic prospect this year than it was in 2014. With a shared threat from Islamic State, the UK working to reopen its embassy in Tehran, President Obama risking a standoff with Congress over new sanctions, and global investors excitedly predicting an Iranian ‘gold rush’, there are good odds that a deal will be reached by the June deadline, and that Iran will be granted sanctions relief. However, a deal is not a guarantor of peaceful relations and regional stability. It could potentially have the opposite effect, and there are some key factors at play within Iran unrelated to the nuclear issue that western policymakers need to consider.

A settlement on Iran’s nuclear programme is a far more realistic prospect this year than it was in 2014. With a shared threat from Islamic State, the UK working to reopen its embassy in Tehran, President Obama risking a standoff with Congress over new sanctions, and global investors excitedly predicting an Iranian ‘gold rush’, there are good odds that a deal will be reached by the June deadline, and that Iran will be granted sanctions relief. However, a deal is not a guarantor of peaceful relations and regional stability. It could potentially have the opposite effect, and there are some key factors at play within Iran unrelated to the nuclear issue that western policymakers need to consider.

Foremost is that velayat-e faqih, the guardianship regime of Islamic jurists produced by the Iranian Revolution, enters 2015 in a profoundly weak position. The regime, a curious hybrid of Marxism and militant Shia Islam, presents itself as both the voice of oppressed masses seeking freedom from tyranny and imperialism, and as the champion of Islamic theocracy. Right now it is struggling to justify its existence on both causes.

 This is partly due to the state-sponsored baby boom that followed the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. Over 60 per cent of Iran’s population is under 30. For them, the events of 1979 were their parents’ revolution, and there are daily signs of this generation’s pushback against the strict religious code of the former. The pushback is most notably seen in women’s dress, with hijabs tied to leave increasing levels of hair exposed, and in satellite TV ownership. Owning a satellite dish, deemed conduits of un-Islamic ideas by the regime, can land an Iranian in prison, yet the regime’s own statistics admit that over 42 percent of Iranians illegally watch foreign satellite TV channels.

 Iranian youth are also relatively well educated, relatively politically active, and relatively unemployed, accounting for 70 percent of Iran’s jobless. These three elements combined are historically a recipe for revolt, and this was exactly what happened six years ago. The Green Movement’s demonstrations were the largest protest wave Iran had seen since the 1979 revolution. For several months in 2009, and again in early 2011, millions took to the streets, initially to protest election fraud, but gradually calling for more democracy, international standards of human rights, and even the dismantling of velayat-e faqih.

The Green Movement may have been neutralized, its protesters violently dispersed and its leaders placed under house arrest, but it has left an indelible mark on the regime’s credibility. Camera phone images of troops shooting peaceful protestors, including women, spread like wildfire across the internet and challenged the regime’s image of representing the popular will of a religiously conservative nation.

 When similar protests caused by similar conditions spread across the Arab world in 2011, the Iranian regime attempted to reestablish its credentials. State propaganda referred to the Arab Spring as the Islamic Awakening. It claimed that the Muslim umma was following Iran’s lead and rising up to replace US allied dictators with Islamic governments. It claimed that finally Ayatollah Khomeini was vindicated.

 Yet, when the pro-democracy movements in the Arab world did give way to an Islamic awakening, the awakening was fundamentally anti Shia and anti Iranian. The regime now finds itself propping up a secular dictatorship in Syria, whose political philosophy is based on 1930s German nationalism, against an uprising seeking the establishment of sharia. This is an extremely awkward position for the Islamic Republic to be in.

 These factors are important for western policymakers to consider because they signal that Iran’s revolutionary regime may be nearing its natural end. Sanctions relief through a nuclear agreement could provide the saving grace the regime needs to buy itself more time. The question then is: how would the regime use this time

 The idea that western rapprochement will inspire it to abandon its cause of spreading anti-western theocracy would be plausible if the key powerbrokers were not themselves active participants in the 1979 revolution. The Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei was a key figure in the revolution and deeply trusted by Khomeini, as was President Rouhani.

 Though generally portrayed in western media as a figure of reform, Rouhani was an ardent revolutionary who served as a missionary for Khomeini’s ideology. He spent much time in prison for this, but was rewarded soon after the revolution with elite posts in the regime. After being appointed ideological adviser to the military, Rouhani expressed his belief in exporting the revolution saying “If the Revolution remains within the country it will be destroyed.… We must export our revolution to Iraq, to Kuwait, to Afghanistan and to all Muslim countries and to all the oppressed countries….If necessary we should do so by means of arms.”

 Rouhani has used his elite positions to quash popular criticism of the regime, including by dispersing student protests by force, silencing newspapers, and engineering the ban on satellite TV. Where Rouhani differs from the regime’s conservatives is that he is an economic pragmatist who wants Iran to be a key player in world trade. However, Rouhani has indicated in statements and articles prior to his election as president that he does not view economic engagement as an end in and of itself. Rather, he sees it as an engine to sustain the Islamic Revolution within Iran and support its spread internationally.

 If sanctions relief is granted, the regime might therefore leverage the resultant economic growth to reassert its raison d’etre and scale up its subversive activities to overthrow pro-Western regimes in the region. The regime might substantially increase military support for terrorist groups including Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as the Houthi rebels in Yemen and Shia militias in Iraq. Such an outcome would exacerbate conflict and instability in the Middle East and threaten western economic interests in the Persian Gulf.

 However, failure to reach an agreement this year similarly bears violent risks. Western negotiators fear that if diplomacy fails, hardliners in Iran will sideline the moderates in the regime. This could push the regime towards taking more desperate and irrational actions to preserve its existence. The Islamic Republic has always conceptualized itself within a dualistic conflict against “Satanic” forces, personified by the United States, the UK and Israel; and it believes its ultimate victory to be predestined. The Orwellian chants of death to each of these countries still accompany major public speeches by the Supreme Leader. If the regime is driven to desperation, this rhetoric could translate to action and the initiation of war, however suicidal the prospect may be for Iran. 

 It is therefore important that western policymakers consider the factors at play within Iran beyond the immediate issue of the nuclear program. Targeted sanctions have helped to weaken a hostile regime and bring it to the negotiating table, and engagement through diplomacy is naturally preferable to the alternative. In order to ensure that a nuclear deal does not undermine security or the prospects for genuine democratic reform in Iran, it is vital that negotiations are conducted in full comprehension of the regime’s current volatility, the world-view of its leaders, and the political aspirations of many of its young citizens.