Will Iran Surrender?

What might the endgame look like for the regime and for Israel?

There is an update at the end of this post written on Sunday morning following the US bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities.

The first round of high-level diplomacy geared to persuading Iran that the game is up and that it should accept the strictest limits on its nuclear programme took place on 20 June in Geneva between European foreign ministers and their Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi.

The talks ended with European claims that the discussions had been constructive, Iranian insistence that nothing could be done until Israel abandons its aggression, and President Trump suggesting it was all a waste of time. It wasn’t that he was opposed to diplomacy, or even a ceasefire. His point was that only direct talks between the US and Iran would make any sense. Israel was not involved in any of these discussions, although it did participate in a fiery debate at the United Nations. Otherwise its main contribution was to remind everyone, and in particular Iran, that it was prepared to keep up its campaign for some time.

If Trump had looked more carefully at what the Europeans were saying he would have appreciated that they were also urging the Iranians to talk to the Americans, and on a much broader agenda than before. Not only will they need to make major concessions on its nuclear programme, of the sort they were unprepared to make at the start of the month, but they will also need to restrict their missile programme and activist role in the region. These concessions will only happen, if at all, when the Iranians are not only convinced privately that they are losing but that they are prepared to acknowledge it publicly. This moment may not come as long as they can keep firing missiles into Israeli cities.

In July 1988, battered after eight years of gruelling war with Iraq, with its army demoralised and retreating, Iraq using chemical weapons, and fears that the US might join the war against them, Iran’s leadership abandoned their previous readiness to fight to the finish and accepted a ceasefire. The supreme leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, made a statements that was read out in a radio address, conveying his displeasure at this turn of events:

Happy are those who have departed through martyrdom. Happy are those who have lost their lives in this convoy of light. Unhappy am I that I still survive and have drunk the poisoned chalice.

Might his successor, the Ayatollah Khamenei end up making a similar statement?

In my previous post I noted Israel’s efforts to draw the US into the fight and Netanyahu’s focus on regime change. In this post I explain how the prior weakness of the regime provided Netanyahu with his opportunity and how it has now been exposed even more by the Israeli campaign. Despite his best efforts, however, Netanyahu has yet to succeed in getting Trump to order US strikes. Instead he is still embracing the possibility of diplomacy. The post is divided into two parts. The first is my piece which has already appeared in the New Statesman, and is republished here with their kind permission. The second part brings the story up to date.