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Iran Hawks and Iranian Propaganda

For some reason, Iran hawks frequently take Iranian propaganda at face value. Daniel Halper writes at The Weekly Standard: Iranian president Hassan Rouhani is taking to Twitter to gloat about the nuclear deal his country struck with the U.S. and other Western countries. “Our relationship w/ the world is based on Iranian nation’s interests. In […]

For some reason, Iran hawks frequently take Iranian propaganda at face value. Daniel Halper writes at The Weekly Standard:

Iranian president Hassan Rouhani is taking to Twitter to gloat about the nuclear deal his country struck with the U.S. and other Western countries.

“Our relationship w/ the world is based on Iranian nation’s interests. In #Geneva agreement world powers surrendered to Iranian nation’s will,” Rouhani tweeted about an hour ago.

This is typical nationalist boilerplate, and it doesn’t really tell us anything about what has happened in the negotiations with Iran. Faced with demands from foreign powers that it was being coerced into accepting, any government would feel obliged to present the concessions it made as a victory and as proof that it had forced the other powers to do what it wanted. Rouhani probably has to be more insistent on portraying the negotiations as a triumph over foreign powers because of hard-line Iranian opposition to making a deal on the nuclear issue and because of strong nationalist sentiment in the country.

It’s not as if Rouhani is going to announce publicly that he has made concessions under duress, and successful diplomacy should allow all parties to a negotiation to return home claiming that they secured everything they needed to have. Given Iran’s history of being exploited and abused by major powers, Rouhani could hardly boast that he had presided over an agreement that will significantly restrict Iran’s nuclear program, so instead he talks about how Iran bested the world’s great powers. The only reason that Iran hawks are paying attention to this is that they insist on pretending that diplomacy with Iran represents “surrender” to Iran, because they are vehemently opposed to resolving the nuclear issue with the sort of compromise that a diplomatic agreement requires.

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