As Iran and the United States negotiate with the aim of reaching a diplomatic nuclear settlement by November 24, 2014, no one can doubt the potential implications of the talks. A deal could herald a new era not just in American-Iranian relations but in the geopolitical landscape of the entire Middle East. America’s Arab allies that are still suspicious of Iran will question the wisdom of Washington’s approach to the Iranian challenge. Yet a failure to reach a deal risks the collapse of the diplomatic track in which both Washington and Tehran have greatly invested as the preferred path toward a resolution. That is why there will most likely be further extensions of the talks in the event that the November 24 deadline is missed.
In any event, there is a tendency to attribute the recent years’ marked shift in America’s Iran policy—and Washington’s eagerness to negotiate with Tehran—to one man, Barack Obama, who came to office with a pledge to overturn the bad blood between the United States and Iran. But Obama’s policy preferences alone could not have brought us to this point.
To begin with, few in Tehran had imagined Obama as a transformer of U.S.-Iran relations. Obama’s 2008 election was arguably far more of an event in the Arab world than it was in Iran. Among ordinary Iranians, it was not that Obama’s message of change and renewal went unnoticed. That much the Iranians could readily observe. The lack of euphoria among Iranians was instead rooted in the prevalent belief that the ethnicity and the political message of the occupant of the White House cannot undo three decades of hostilities between Iran and the United States. Nor could the arrival of Obama alter the ideological red lines of some of those in power in Tehran.
