In the days after Iran and the United States reached a preliminary agreement to pause their war, Iranian politicians, generals, and clerics from a range of political factions described the deal as a victory that showed Tehran’s resilience against a far more powerful enemy.
That is the position Iran’s leaders are pushing even though the country lost a slew of its top political and military figures, suffered a battering to its stock of ballistic missiles and was left with an economy — which was already struggling — strained even further by a naval blockade.
“Iran has taken a major step toward final victory,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian Parliament who has played a major role in negotiating the deal, wrote on social media on Monday.
As negotiators were nearing an agreement, Sadegh Amoli Larijani, chairman of a powerful appointed council that supervises the work of the government, wrote on social media on Saturday that Iranians had shown a “renewed spirit of resistance” and defeated U.S.-Israeli plans to overthrow the Islamic republic.
Some of the backslapping is most likely aimed at presenting a united front both abroad and at home, where a vocal hard-line minority has protested the agreement as a betrayal of those killed in the war.
The comments also reflect the genuine perception right now of Iran’s leaders, who can point to the fact that the terms of the agreement, though still not fully known, will fall far short of what President Trump had previously declared as his goals in starting the war: “total and complete victory” for the United States and “unconditional surrender” for Iran.
The flavor of Iran’s leadership has also changed as a result of the war. Some pragmatic figures, such as the national security official Ali Larijani, were killed, while the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — the military force that defends Iran’s system of clerical rule — has consolidated power. The long-term impact of those changes is still to be seen, but the shifts raise the question of how willing the military, now even more powerful, will be to make serious concessions at the negotiating table.
Mr. Trump’s rhetoric also appears to be adding to Iranian leaders’ confident tone. The American president has publicly excoriated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel for mounting attacks on Lebanon that nearly derailed the U.S.-Iran deal, and he has described Iran’s current leadership, including the supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, as pragmatists.
According to Mr. Trump’s account of the deal, Iran is to allow shipping through the Strait of Hormuz — a return to the status quo before the war. But in what is perhaps an indication of the leverage Iran feels it has, Tehran has indicated that it intends to charge ships for passing through the strait, which it did not do before the war.
“Iran is certain to be emboldened by this deal,” said Mehrzad Boroujerdi, an Iran expert at Missouri University of Science and Technology. “I cannot recall another instance in which Iran suffered such serious military setbacks yet emerged with what could be considered a diplomatic victory.”
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