“Neither Gaza, nor Lebanon—my life for Iran.” That’s the rallying cry chanted at protests across Iran, and it might well hold the key to the country’s future.
In the face of a brutal crackdown on the wave of demonstrations that began in September 2022, protesters—who represent an increasingly broad swath of the Iranian population—pose a profound challenge to a regime that has suffered from a series of devastating losses abroad and a crisis of legitimacy at home.
In desperate need of sanctions relief to assuage its badly deteriorating economy, the Iranian regime has signaled interest in a new nuclear deal, providing the United States with a historic opportunity to negotiate a grand bargain that could reshape the Middle East.
As they contemplate the contours of a new agreement, U.S. President Donald Trump—the dealmaker—and Secretary of State Marco Rubio—who has championed human rights in Iran—must not abandon these brave protesters to regime hard-liners.
Without accountability to its own people, the regime might trade nuclear capacity for sanctions relief, allowing it to accelerate a crackdown on civil society. Such a deal would ensure the survival of the Islamic Republic and its reemergence as an implacable foe of the United States and its national security interests.
In order to minimize the threat from a resurgent Iran and promote long-term U.S. interests, the Trump administration should ensure that any new deal includes provisions that protect and empower civil society activists. Vocal U.S. support for Iranian civil society—which overwhelmingly opposes the regime’s regional policies and anti-Western stance—could play a critical role in steering Iran toward a more meaningful and lasting rapprochement with the United States.
Time is not on the side of the Iranian regime, which needs sanctions relief more than the United States needs a grand bargain.
With Iran’s economy in shambles, Trump will have significant leverage to negotiate a new deal that addresses his stated objections to the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), including providing for more stringent restrictions on Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs and preventing Iran from resupplying its proxy forces.
By the time that Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah reached a cease-fire with Israel in November, it was negotiating from a position of weakness, having already lost its senior leadership and a substantial portion of its arsenal. Iran might well do the same with its vulnerable nuclear program and a grand bargain with the United States.
Such a deal would be a win for the Trump administration, but it would also increase Iran’s oil revenue by tens of billions of dollars, providing an economic lifeline to an Iranian regime that would no doubt seek to build itself back up as a disruptive regional actor. The Trump administration should have no illusions about the DNA of the Iranian regime and its long-standing policy of “strategic patience.”
Trump has indicated that he has no interest in forcing regime change in Iran. As an anonymous Tehran-based analyst recently wrote: “The path toward society-based reform in Iran is centered on strengthening civil society. Other strategies—such as seeking change through foreign intervention as advocated by some in the diaspora—would not produce a better outcome.”
Yet the United States has a vital interest in the outcome of the struggle to shape the future of Iran, and forgoing regime change doesn’t mean standing on the sidelines. The United States should throw its full support behind the Iranian people and can do so by insisting that any agreement with Iran contains conditions in that seek to protect the civil society activists and protesters who will ultimately play a critical role in the future direction of country.
Iran stands out in the region as one of the few countries that has a strong, highly educated, and active civil society. Its dissident lawyers, activists, labor leaders, teachers, journalists, artists, and many others have fought long and hard for the defense of basic rights.
Iran’s active civil society also exists in the diaspora, and any new deal with Iran should be predicated on an end to the regime’s lawless practice of targeting dissidents abroad. Such a condition would empower Iranian dissidents around the world who could, without fear of retribution, advocate for democratic reform and for the rights of civil society activists within Iran.
It could also create a potential template for dealing with transnational violence as practiced by other autocratic regimes—in particular, Russia and China—and demonstrate that the United States has not forfeited its leadership role among the Western world.
More far-reaching, Washington should support the voices of activists within Iran by consulting with established human rights and civil society organizations with a long history of working on Iran to formulate specific and measurable conditions regarding civil society protections.
In this way, the United States could translate the demands of Iranian civil society into conditions that could, for example, include the commutation of the death penalty for the 54 political prisoners currently sentenced to death; the release of leading political prisoners such as Nobel laureate Narges Mohammedi; the release of imprisoned human rights lawyers and a quashing of active prosecutions against them; the repeal of the new draconian Chastity and Hijab Law, meant by hard-liners as a nail in the coffin of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement; and finally, a mechanism for snapback sanctions to punish violations.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has sent mixed signals on negotiating with the United States, first indicating in August 2024 that there would be “no barrier” to negotiations with the “enemy,” but more recently deeming such negotiations “unwise, unintelligent, and not honorable.”
If the Iranian regime does choose to resume nuclear negotiations, Khamenei would likely reject civil society conditions as a poison pill for the Islamic Republic. But the legitimacy of Khamenei and other hard-liners has been damaged beyond repair and their hold on the country is slipping, amid reports that Khamenei is ailing.
Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign 2.0—already underway as the administration pushes the three remaining European JCPOA European signatories to trigger snapback sanctions to restore those that were suspended by the accord—will likely magnify popular discontent, squeeze the regime further, and heighten the urgency for sanctions relief.
Feeling under siege, regime hard-liners might choose to double down on repression, which would risk further isolation and a backlash from emboldened protesters. At some point, a new guard in Iran—faced with an existential crisis at home, an unpredictable Trump threatening a military strike, and the specter of Bashar al-Assad’s fate in Syria—might begin to see that “strategic patience” is no longer strategic. At that point, the regime may become more amenable to negotiating conditions in a deal that would have seemed unthinkable before.
Even if Tehran rejects such a deal, Washington advocating for conditions focused on empowering civil society would undermine regime hard-liners and strengthen the hand of protesters by giving them a rallying point and a mechanism to formulate their own demands.
Such conditions would also represent a sharp departure from failed U.S. policies in the region, including Washington’s disastrous efforts to impose democracy through military intervention. In contrast to 1953—when the United States instigated a coup against elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh—by standing with the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protesters today, Washington could position itself on the right side of Iranian history.
As then-Senator Rubio wrote in 2020 following the “Bloody November” protests in Iran the previous year: “it takes tremendous effort, organization, and courage to stand up against authoritarianism. When the United States turns its back on these protesters, we squander an opportunity to put American power and influence to use for the greater good and instead convey to those standing up that they do so alone.”
Amid the tumult in the region and the resilience of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protesters, the table is set for Trump and Rubio to negotiate the grandest of grand bargains with Iran; to stand with the Iranian people in their quest for freedom; and perhaps even to jar Iran loose from its alliance with the anti-Western, autocratic coalition of Russia, China, and North Korea.
The post Trump’s Grand Bargain With Iran Shouldn’t Abandon Its People appeared first on Foreign Policy.
