What If the Iran Deal Broke Down Because Everyone Finally Realized How Naive Obama’s Strategy Is?

Many of the reporters and commentators writing about the looming, possible deal between the U.S. and Iran focus on the details of the deal itself — and more specifically, how the Obama administration has conceded almost every issue to the Iranians. There still remain plenty of details that, days before a meaningful deadline on July 9, remain unresolved between the two sides. But there’s another looming issue, whatever the details are: the need for both sides to trust each other and commit to a partnership between two very different nations.

Laura Rozen, a reporter whose disposition, to put it mildly, is somewhat favorable toward the Obama administration, its hopes for a deal with Iran, and unpleasant Middle Eastern regimes, suggests that some negotiators are beginning to worry the gap between the United States and Iran’s revolutionary Islamic government is simply too wide or risky to bridge. Acknowledge Iran’s past behavior, for instance, even informally, “is very tough,” a U.S. official tells her, “and making this decision to do the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [the formal name of the prospective final Iran nuclear deal] is a very big decision.”

A Europe-based analyst of Iranian affairs told her this: “In the end, it goes back to the key principles of what the revolution is about. . . . Some say, ’We are an anti-imperialist revolutionary state. We are not willing to give in to the supreme [Western] powers.’”

Now, some of the guardians of the Islamic Revolution are hankering for financial security, new investment flows, and new parts for their SUVs, so they may be willing to accept a deal no matter what. But the issue here is one that conservatives have raised all along: that Iran is not just another regional power with some bad history with the U.S., and the U.S. is not just a party with some shared interests with the Iranians; they are countries ideologically opposed at their very core. Does that make a deal impossible? No. But it could be hard for even the Obama administration to summon the delusional optimism necessary to put pen to paper on a concession-ridden deal.