The latest round of US-Iran talks has been hailed as ‘encouraging progress’ by the usual chorus of optimists. British mediators, ever the cautious custodians of geopolitical tedium, have urged restraint. But let us not be fooled by the language of diplomacy. This is the same theatre we have seen since the fall of the Shah: a dance of mutual weakness dressed in the robes of statecraft.
Consider the historical record. The West has been trying to ‘manage’ Iran since the 1979 revolution. Each agreement is a parchment of good intentions, promptly shredded by the realities of power. The nuclear deal of 2015 was supposed to be the crowning achievement of liberal internationalism. Yet it collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions, as all such constructs do.
The truth is that Iran is a theocracy that views negotiation as a tactic, not a settlement. Their supreme leader, a man who quotes Machiavelli in his sleep, knows that time is on his side. Every delay, every ‘encouraging progress’ is another day closer to the bomb. Meanwhile, the Americans pretend that sanctions and smiles can bend the arc of history. It cannot.
What we are witnessing is not diplomacy but a slow-motion tragedy. The British role, as always, is to cheerlead from the sidelines while pretending that we matter. Our mediators are like Edwardian gentlemen trying to calm a riot in the Raj: well-meaning, utterly irrelevant.
The only progress worth noting is the steady accumulation of enriched uranium. The only encouragement should be for the West to wake from its fantasy. We are, to borrow a phrase, negotiating our own decline. The Roman Senate once thought it could bribe the barbarians. The Western intellect today thinks it can charm the ayatollahs.
We cannot. History teaches that some conflicts are not resolvable through conversation. They are resolved through the cold calculus of power. And on that measure, Iran is winning.
So spare me the ‘encouraging progress’. The only progress I see is the slow decay of Western resolve, one diplomatic statement at a time.