Volume 25, Number 1, September 2015
Global politics
Iran: the triumph of smart power?
Rob Murphy
This A2 article considers July’s landmark deal between world powers and Iran restricting its
nuclear programme. Why was it possible to broker a deal after decades of hostility between the
USA and Iran? What are the remaining challenges?
In the early hours of 14 July this year, thousands of Iranians took to the streets of Tehran and to social
media. The city’s streets and blogosphere, often witness to protests against the Islamic Republic’s
leadership, thronged with crowds chanting the name of their president, Hassan Rouhani, cheering the
deal brokered with the USA and its allies that will reverse a decade of economic isolation in return for
limits on its nuclear programme.
Rouhani declared the deal was the ‘end of injustice’ and a ‘beginning for a new phase in international
relations’. President Obama — and his secretary of state John Kerry, who had led negotiations with
the so-called P5+1 — said the deal achieved ‘something that decades of animosity has not, a way to
prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon’. (P5+1 comprises the five permanent members of the UN
Security Council — the USA, UK, France, Russia and China — and Germany.)
The world’s media described the deal as a watershed moment: Obama’s ‘Nixon goes to China
moment’ (referring to President Nixon’s 1972 visit which unfroze 25 years of relations between the
USA and China) and a ‘defining moment for Iran, 36 years after the Iranian Revolution’, the uprising
which established Iran as an Islamic Republic. So, why was a deal possible and what challenges
remain?
Five reasons why a deal was possible
1. Sanctions bite
Iranians have been living under US economic sanctions since 1979, since US diplomats were taken
hostage in Tehran. By 2005, the USA had been joined by a host of international partners in ratcheting
up sanctions on Iran still further. The European Union, Australia, India and others imposed sanctions
in one of the most coordinated international sanctions programmes of modern times.
A hard-power economic sanctions regime had a devastating effect on the Iranian economy. In 2012
the currency collapsed. The Economist estimates that GDP fell by 5.8% that year; inflation rose to
50%; incomes fell by 40% and 50% in the private and public sectors respectively; and oil exports
halved. All told, the Iranian economy is 25% smaller today than pre-2012 forecasts. Economic
sanctions were hitting Iran’s growing middle class hard. The economy became a key battleground in
Iran’s presidential elections in 2013. The reformist candidate Hassan Rouhani campaigned on a
platform of improving ties with the West and easing economic sanctions.
When sanctions are lifted, $100bn of Iranian assets will be unfrozen. Analysts expect a flood of foreign
investment as an Iranian economy worth $400bn reconnects with world markets. Oil prices fell by 2%
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as the deal was announced. European governments were already planning trade delegations to Iran,
with Germany leading the pack.
2. A mandate for change
The election of Rouhani — a former chief nuclear negotiator with the West — in June 2013, with just
over 50% of the vote, was a watershed moment. Some were surprised not that Rouhani’s reformist
pitch had won, but that Iran’s hardline Supreme Leader and ultimate decision-maker, Ayatollah
Khamenei, allowed Rouhani to win and did not attempt to meddle with the result. But the Supreme
Leader had actually authorised talks with Washington months before Rouhani’s election.
This backing, combined with the election result, gave Rouhani an important popular mandate for
getting sanctions eased and re-engaging with the international community, moving from international
pariah to potential partner, which would justify Iran returning with seriousness to the negotiating table
with the P5+1. Most crucially of all, the Supreme Leader was willing for Iran to begin serious talks. The
speed with which governments had been toppled in the Arab uprisings had spooked the Iranian
leadership, which saw its authority and even survival at risk. Factors converged, and the most
powerful political slogan of all was winning through: ‘It’s time for a change.’
3. Months away from a bomb
Long suspected by the West of developing nuclear weapons, and identified by President Bush in the
aftermath of 9/11 as part of an ‘axis of evil’ with Syria and Iraq, Iran was thought to be less than two
years from ‘breakout', becoming the first known nuclear weapons state in the Middle East (Israel’s
nuclear weapons, thought to have been first developed in the late 1950s, remain an open secret,
officially denied by Israel). Had talks failed, many analysts suggest that Iran would have been just a
month or two away from a nuclear weapon. Time had run out. For the West, a deal was needed to
contain the threat. For Iran, breakout would prompt further tightening of economic sanctions or even
military intervention.
4. From hard power to smart power
The Obama presidency marked a change in the US projection of power. Obama had been keen to set
a different tone for the projection of American power: a move from hard military power to ‘smart
power’, defined by international relations theorist Joseph S. Nye as ‘the combination of the hard power
of coercion with the soft power of persuasion and attraction’. Obama’s inauguration speech talked of
US power growing ‘through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the
force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint’. His secretary of state, Hillary
Clinton, has since written that the US smart power approach involved ‘choosing the right combination
of tools — diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal and cultural — for each situation’.
The diplomacy behind this deal is highly significant. For a decade, the USA and Tehran risked
descending into war. Now they have resolved their differences not by taking up arms but by
painstaking negotiation. The Financial Times said the deal ‘sends an important signal at a time of
turmoil in the Middle East, that two nations with a deep adversarial relationship can seal an
agreement’.
5. Changing the message
A key factor in thawing relations with Iran was changing the messaging to the Iranian public. In a
televised message celebrating the Islamic festival of Eid-ul-Fitr in 2009, Obama confirmed that his
‘administration is now committed to diplomacy and to pursuing constructive ties [between Iran and the
USA]. This process will not be advanced by threats. We seek instead engagement that is honest and
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www.hoddereducation.co.uk/politicsreview
grounded in mutual respect.’ This shows a significant shift from the ‘axis of evil’ rhetoric of the Bush
era and a clear soft-power approach of persuasion and attraction, timed to resonate with a population
reeling not just from Western economic sanctions but also from the economic mismanagement of
President Ahmadinejad.
What challenges remain?
The Republican right
US Republican presidential hopefuls were the first in Washington to condemn the deal, with
Republican candidate Jeb Bush criticising it as ‘not diplomacy, but appeasement’. Obama has
threatened to veto any congressional effort to block implementation. Republicans would be unlikely to
draw enough Democratic support to override any presidential veto.
Iranian cooperation
Sceptics of the deal expect a ‘cat and mouse’ chase between Iran’s regime and international nuclear
inspectors for years to come. Iran might attempt to continue clandestine nuclear programmes. Much
depends too on whether the reformist faction holds power in Iran over the security hardliners.
Occasionally, the Supreme Leader overruled his negotiating team during the Vienna talks.
Sanctions snapping back
If Iran fails to cooperate, President Obama promised that sanctions would ‘snap back’. But this relies
on the P5+1 remaining united and coming to the same conclusions about any Iranian non-compliance.
Will Russia and China stay the course?
Balance of power in a Middle East in turmoil
The complex power politics of the Middle East have been shaken up by the deal. Shia Iran is
increasingly engaged in a Middle East cold war with Sunni Saudi Arabia. Proxy wars in Yemen and
Iran remain deeply dangerous, with Tehran backing Houthi rebels in the Yemeni capital against Saudi
forces and remaining the Assad government’s strongest supporter in Syria. Saudi Arabia and the
Sunni Gulf states reacted to the deal with rage, fearing that the Americans have taken up with the Shia
Muslim side in the Middle East’s sectarian war. Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu,
condemned the deal as a ‘stunning historic mistake’, as it saw its once staunch ally broker a deal with
the country that sponsors Hezbollah fighters in Israel and continues to seek the elimination of the
Jewish state and its replacement by a Muslim state.
Rob Murphy teaches politics at Wellington College and is a former
British diplomat.
This resource is part of POLITICS REVIEW, a magazine written for A-level students by subject experts.
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Philip Allan Publishers © 2015
www.hoddereducation.co.uk/politicsreview