The Case for Optimism on Iran in 2022 and Beyond
Back in October, I was given a piece of advice. I was having coffee with an admired journalist who has covered Iran for many years. This was before the Raisi administration had decided to restart the nuclear talks—the journalist and I were discussing the growing concern in Western capitals that Iran would never return to the negotiating table. I did not share this concern.
I explained to the journalist that given the way in which the Raisi administration had talked about its goal of lifting sanctions and given the direction of its regional foreign policy, I had little doubt that the talks would resume. Across the table there was some polite nodding, but eventually I was offered some well-intentioned advice, a nugget for a naïf. I was told to be careful about being optimistic, because if I was wrong too many times “people would stop listening” to me. The conversation has bothered me for months.
Of course, the nuclear talks did restart five weeks later—a minor vindication. But in the subsequent weeks, in conversations on the likely trajectory of the talks, officials and journalists told me again and again that I was the only optimistic person they had spoken to. Most of the coverage and commentary on the negotiations struck a decidedly pessimistic tone. More articles were written about “Plan B” than there were about “Plan A”—there was startlingly little analysis on what it would take to make the talks successful, but ample analysis of how to plan a new pressure campaign or military strikes. The assumption was that the talks would fail, leading either to an Iranian nuke or a regional war. Grim stuff.
So far, the talks have not failed, though it seems that the only policymakers actively seeking to inject some optimism in the talks are the Iranian delegation and Russia’s chief negotiator, Mikhail Ulyanov, whose Tweets read like the encouragements of a cheerful uncle. Western officials have pointed to “modest progress” in the talks but have so far failed to declare with any conviction that the restoration of the JCPOA is actually achievable. Most of the Western messaging insists that “time is running out” and implies failure is likely because Iran wants the talks to fail.
I recently came across a quote adapted from Dennis Gabor, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1971. Gabor suggests that “the best way to cope with the future is to invent it.” The future is inherently uncertain and as human beings we are uncomfortable with uncertainty—if we cannot see what lies around the corner, we are hardwired to be wary. As Gabor notes in his 1963 book, Inventing the Future, from which the quote is adapted, the typical approach to dealing with this uncertainty is to try and “predict” the future. We tend to evaluate what could happen and prepare ourselves accordingly. But Gabor’s insight is to remind us that the future is, to a significant degree, what we make it. We have a capacity for invention.
Yet, for those working on policy issues on Iran or the wider Middle East, it is prediction, not invention, that appears to be the primary focus of their intellectual outputs. This is a major reason why the outlook for the region is always so grim. Prediction rewards pessimism. Consider the meteorologist, whose job it is to predict the weather, but who has no means to influence whether the sun shines or the rain pours. If the meteorologist predicts sunshine, and then it rains, those who were drenched in the unanticipated downpour will rue him and his forecast. If it happens one too many times, they will stop listening to his forecast altogether. But if the meteorologist predicts rain, and it ends up being a bright and sunny day, few will complain that they had prepared for gloomy weather by taking along an umbrella.
If I were a meteorologist, I would heed the advice I was given in October. It makes sense—if your sunny forecast is wrong too many times, people will stop listening to you. But I am not a meteorologist, and prediction is not the extent of how I can cope with the uncertainty of the future. Policymakers, policy experts, and even journalists—who shape how we think about complex problems and who chronicle the effectiveness of attempted solutions—have forgotten, at least in the case of Iran, that they have a capacity to invent the future.
Over the last few months, I had been speaking to Western officials and making the case for optimism. Each time I set out the facts that support my generally optimistic outlook, I am told “that is an interesting theory.” Implicit in this response is a surprising discomfort with the theoretical. The officials are characteristically diplomatic, but I can sometimes tell that they are asking themselves “what planet is this guy living on?”
The funny thing is that I am, “in a sense I am unable to explicate further,” on a different planet. Writing about the ways in which scientists may differ in their interpretations of observable phenomenon, Thomas Kuhn, the 20th century’s foremost philosopher of science, writes that “the proponents of competing paradigms practice their trades in different worlds.” Kuhn’s observation makes clear that while most policymakers and analysts might understand the factual basis for my optimistic outlook, the existence of a plausible theory suggesting that the future may be better is not seen as a sensible way to cope with uncertainty. Given the fraught history of Iranian foreign policy, having low expectations makes sense. The story of the Iran nuclear deal is a story of profound disappointment—at least so far. But even if low expectations help those of us working in this space to cope at some personal level, it is difficult to see how pessimism serves us if we are professionally committed to fixing things.
In 2018, when the Trump administration withdrew from the JCPOA, European governments scrambled to find some means to preserve the economic benefits of the deal for Iran. The reimposition of US secondary sanctions was going to have a major impact on Iran’s links with the global financial system, and this was quickly identified as a problem for continued trade and investment. The EU and E3 began discussing whether some kind of “special purpose vehicle” could be established to facilitate payments for trade absent direct banking links. Over the next two years, working first with Axel Hellman, and then Sahil Shah, I wrote some of the first detailed policy briefs exploring how such a special purpose vehicle could work. These briefs helped, in a small way, to shore up the case for the establishment of INSTEX, a novel state-owned trade intermediary.
As with many inventions, the early iteration of INSTEX unfortunately failed. It has not had any real impact on Iran’s ability to trade with the world in the face of US secondary sanctions. There are numerous reasons for this failure, but I find it fascinating that implicit in a lot of the criticism of the INSTEX project is the idea that it was foolhardy for European officials to try to invent something new. As INSTEX faltered in its initial stages, eliciting criticism, pessimism crept back in, and this has prevented European governments from giving the project adequate support. Imagine if Thomas Edison, when working on the incandescent light bulb, was so perturbed by the failure of his first prototype that he questioned whether an electric light can be created at all. When it comes to Iran policy, setbacks have a troubling tendency to lead policymakers to reject optimistic scenarios, even when those scenarios remain theoretically possible. To put it another way, when policies fail, policymakers change their interpretation of the facts, rather than tweaking their policies. As the INSTEX project lost momentum, European officials began to speak more forcefully and negatively about Iran’s missile program and its nuclear escalations—the future looked uncertain, and pessimism seemed the easier way to cope.
But when it comes to Iran policy, what is easy, is not always what is best. This is precisely why there are so few new ideas about what US and European policy on Iran should look like. There is no positive vision for what Iran’s place in the world should be in five, ten, or fifty years. There is little effort made to create new tools or craft new strategies that could help bring about some new vision of the future. Sure, repeating pessimistic predictions is the intellectually and emotionally easier means of coping with an uncertain future. But to pursue optimistic invention is the better means.
As we look forward to 2022, the case for optimism on Iran is clear. This case does not depend on some newfangled set of facts or observations. Iran is thoroughly analysed and reported upon—the facts are well-known. The case for optimism rests instead on how we choose to interpret these facts and whether we marshal them to find new, innovative, and inventive pathways for policy, or whether we choose instead to make dire predictions and gird ourselves accordingly. In this sense, the choice we face as those working on Iran policy is not about choosing between Plan A or Plan B—it is much bigger than that. The choice is about whether we want to live on Planet A or Planet B.
In 2022, I’ll be tinkering away on Planet A. It’s a different world.
Photo: IRNA
