Why U.S. Negotiations with Iran Failed: The Myth of the Regime’s Moderates

The United States failed to prevent the Islamic Republic of Iran’s progress towards a nuclear weapon until it struck Iranian nuclear facilities on June 21, 2025. Previously, successive U.S. administrations attempted a range of policy approaches that mitigated the symptoms of Iran’s behavior but fell short of confronting the root causes behind its destabilizing activity in the Middle East. The U.S. foreign policy community misunderstood Iran, failing to see the regime’s singular structure under the principles of the Islamic Revolution of 1979. As a result, the policies of economic sanctions, non-binding negotiations culminating in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) of 2015, unwritten agreements through backchannel talks, and maximum pressure without the decisive use of military force each faltered in addressing Iran’s progress towards a nuclear weapon. Immediately prior to Israeli and American military action, reports indicated that Iran had a reserve of 60 percent enriched uranium, enough to be converted to the 90 percent enriched uranium needed for an estimated nine nuclear weapons.¹ The military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Esfahan, and Natanz presented the first instance of U.S. policy working effectively to achieve its stated objectives.² Understanding years of prior U.S. missteps with regards to Iran is key to avoiding future policy errors and instructive as to the utility of military force in preventing adversaries from acquiring nuclear weapons.   

The Iranian Regime’s Structure

Upon assuming office in 2009, Barack Obama offered to negotiate with Iran without preconditions, putting forward unilateral concessions from the United States on Iran’s nuclear ambitions. This placative effort sought to strengthen so-called moderates within the regime while pacifying its hardliners. The notion that conciliatory U.S. engagement would yield meaningful concessions from the regime revealed a misunderstanding of the Iranian government’s unitary structure and ideological fervency. 

Iran’s Supreme Leader rules as the custodian of Islamic law in the political domain under the authority of the velayat-e faqih, translated as “the guardianship of the jurist,” which grants the Supreme Leader dominion over the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Council of Guardians, military, police, and judiciary, as well as Iran’s semi-democratic institutions: the unicameral legislature, or majlis, and the presidency. The former is the locus of power, while the latter provides democratic window-dressing to theocratic overreach.³ Ayatollah Ali Khamenei succeeded the architect of the 1979 Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, upon Khomeini’s death in 1989. As Supreme Leader, Khamenei has heralded the exportation of the Islamic Revolution’s revolutionary ideology, presiding over Iran’s destabilization of the Middle East through both direct attacks and a proxy strategy targeting Israel and U.S. allies across the region.⁴  

The Mirage of Moderates and Hardliners

While Khamenei makes no secret of Iran’s ideological opposition to the West, the Iranian president and foreign ministry are more likely to make pronouncements in favor of engagement with it. Occasionally, they speak positively of domestic liberalization and reform. The Supreme Leader and elected leadership complement one another when it comes to public diplomacy, utilizing differing tactics aligned behind shared goals, as set by Khamenei. This works to the regime’s benefit, since the perception that Iran’s elected leadership seeks good-faith negotiations with the West sanitizes the regime’s revolutionary ends. 

Best estimates consistently show only 15-20 percent of the Iranian people support the regime.⁵ Nonetheless, years of statements from members of the U.S. policy community revealed a persistent belief in the possibility of sidelining the regime’s hardliners. Or, as former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates termed it, U.S. officials have been preoccupied with the search for “elusive Iranian moderates” within the regime.⁶ Washington has sought negotiations with Iran on this basis, bolstered by a belief in the American propensity for problem-solving and the false perception of factionalism within the Islamic Republic. 

In fact, the Supreme Leader has the power to prohibit the election of truly reformist candidates. Khamenei appoints half of the members of the Council of Guardians, with the other half nominated by the judiciary whose leadership he also selects. The Council of Guardians screens candidates for political office and monitors elections. Therefore, the locus of power in the Iranian regime can and will prohibit the election of candidates with reformist or moderate intentions threatening the regime’s hardline base of support. 

Mohammed Khatami’s presidency from 1997 to 2005 marked the most recent period of hope for democratic reform in Iran. Yet Khatami’s stated support for liberalization coincided with successful efforts from regime hardliners to consolidate and maximize their influence in future elections.⁷ Under Khatami’s rule, freedom of the press was quashed. The judiciary shuttered hundreds of magazines, including those that supported Khatami. The end of Khatami’s presidency in 2005 saw the locus of power in the Iranian regime more firmly consolidated with the Supreme Leader and the IRGC and Iranian media banned from referring to Khatami.⁸ After his presidency, Khatami was said to have described his own role in the regime as the “system’s footman.”⁹     

The Supreme Leader believes his political authority to be bestowed by God in accordance with divine benevolence.¹⁰ According to the Islamic Revolution’s theory of the concept of the guardianship of the jurist, which breaks with prevailing Shiite positions of political disengagement, the Supreme Leader has the right to overrule Islamic law in favor of the state’s interests.¹¹ Founding Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini described his view of the relationship between religious and political authority in Iran in an interview with journalist Oriana Fallaci: “it is right that the supreme religious authority should oversee the work of the Prime Minister or of the President of the republic, to make sure that they don’t make mistakes or go against the law: that is, against the Koran.”¹²

The preamble to Iran’s constitution states that Iran’s armed forces and the IRGC are the agents of “the ideological mission of jihad in God’s way… extending the sovereignty of God’s law throughout the world.”¹³ Despite the severe blows dealt to its public image at the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988, the IRGC today serves as the key Iranian institution fusing Islamic revolutionary goals with hard power capabilities.¹⁴ In addition to the exportation of the Islamic Revolution, the IRGC has an expanded role in domestic Iranian politics and in the economy.¹⁵ 

Muslim Modernizers and Fundamentalists: The Obama Administration’s Approach

President Obama took office with the promise of a radical overhaul of Middle East policy. Institutions like the American Foreign Policy Project made the case that the Obama administration should seek negotiations with Iran without preconditions, arguing that the United States needed to take responsibility for overcoming hatred and suspicion on behalf of both parties.¹⁶ 

Obama’s maiden foreign policy speech, “A New Beginning,” on June 4, 2009, in Cairo marked the first concerted attempt to engage Iran.¹⁷ At this time, the Obama administration sought outreach to both the perceived modernizers and fundamentalists within the regime. President Obama wrote conciliatory letters directly to Khamenei at least four times between 2009 and the 2015 signing of the JCPOA.¹⁸ Obama issued support for Iran’s use of nuclear energy and offered talks without preconditions “on the basis of mutual respect.”¹⁹ This was a significant departure from the Bush administration’s preconditions for negotiations with Iran in 2007, which required that that Iran must first suspend its nuclear enrichment before the United States would agree to talks.²⁰

The 2009 Cairo speech placed the United States and Iran on an equal moral footing. Obama remarked that just as Iran had taken U.S. citizens hostage, the United States “played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government,” referring to events that led to the ousting of Iranian premier Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953.²¹ Foreign policy critics have sought to blame the United States for the coup in the past, but the Cairo speech marked the first time a sitting president gave voice to this theory of American culpability.²² As Iran scholar Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations has argued, Obama’s speech conveyed a disputed version of events which benefited the Iranian regime.²³ 

Obama’s view of dynamics in the Middle East has been described as a clash between modernizers and fundamentalists taking place within a single civilization.²⁴ The first test of the Obama administration’s commitment to modernizers came just days after his speech at Cairo University with the Iranian regime’s declaration of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s electoral victory on June 12, 2009 and the subsequent outbreak of the student-driven Green Movement protests.²⁵ The protests were the largest in Iran since 1979 and the Iranian regime responded with violent repression.²⁶

  Rather than empowering the protestors, Obama framed the Green Movement as an internal Iranian “debate.”²⁷ He snubbed the protestors by refusing to weigh in with his support.²⁸ Iranian dissidents in exile drew attention to the overt pleas from the Iranian people: “Obama, are you with us or with them?”²⁹ The Obama administration was with “them,” maintaining it was possible to engage moderates or reformists from within the Iranian regime. ³⁰ Obama would later justify his decision not to endorse the Green Movement by citing the argument that he risked tainting protestors with the perception of being pro-American agitators.³¹

At the same time, the Obama administration used economic sanctions between 2009 and 2013 to bring the Iranian regime to the negotiating table. The Obama administration blocked Iran’s access to international financial markets and ensured the passing of an additional United Nations (UN) Security Council resolution condemning Iran’s nuclear activities, leading to renewed sanctions from the Europeans.³² Congress also passed additional sanctions targeting the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran.³³ In 2013, with its oil exports cut in half, payments unprocessed, and an inflation rate of 31.5 percent, Iran was forced to the negotiating table.³⁴ 

Negotiating with Moderates and Hardliners

The 2013 election in Iran of President Hassan Rouhani was met with optimism from the United States foreign policy community: “A new president may take his country in a new direction,” wrote scholar Suzanne Maloney of Brookings.³⁵ Rouhani had been crowned the “sheikh of diplomacy” for his comportment in negotiations with Europeans from 2003 to 2005.³⁶ 

Negotiations began in 2013 and primarily took place in Vienna, Austria. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, one of the lead negotiators, describes her operating procedure as a “180-degree turn from the approach to Iran that U.S. presidents had taken for almost a quarter century” in that she was focused on engagement rather than coercion.³⁷ Yet Iran was not brought to the table by American diplomatic outreach, but by the pressure of a global economic embargo.³⁸ Nonetheless, the Obama administration proceeded with a conciliatory strategy in talks with Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and his team. 

The Obama administration, including Under Secretary Sherman, advisor Robert Malley, advisor Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State John Kerry, and the president himself, believed they were empowering the negotiating party as moderates. Yet neither the president nor the Foreign Minister of Iran carried the mandate to protect the integrity of the Iranian Republic. Only the Supreme Leader has the final say on negotiated agreements. Sherman says that Zarif, as well as President Rouhani, undertook significant risks in negotiating with the United States, with her retelling conveying the impression that the United States was on the same team as the Iranian negotiators, against Iran’s opposing hardliners.³⁹ Rouhani and Zarif successfully reinforced American misconceptions about Iranian factional politics in order to extract concessions from the United States.⁴⁰

Suzanne Maloney argues the deal proved that “Iranian policies are shaped by varying degrees of pragmatism and a rational assessment of the costs and benefits of its options.”⁴¹ The deal rescued Iran’s economy and dismantled the coercive sanctions infrastructure the Obama administration had established. It allowed the designated monitoring agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to turn a blind eye to Iran’s noncompliance.⁴² Prior to the agreement, the formal position of the United States and the P5+1 was that Iran only needed a few hundred centrifuges. Concessions from the Obama administration allowed Iran to maintain a substantial enrichment apparatus of 6,000 centrifuges instead. Once the limits of the JCPOA ran their course, Iran would be mere days away from nuclear weapons capability.⁴³ The JCPOA led to the bolstering of the IRGC and increased funding for Iran’s proxies in the region, not the moderation of Iran’s destabilizing activity in the Middle East.⁴⁴ Iran rapidly defied the terms of the deal it had agreed to, exceeding the JCPOA’s limits on advanced centrifuge research and development.⁴⁵ For example, the IAEA reported that Iran continued to exceed the JCPOA’s cap of 300 kilograms of low-enriched uranium and initiated the operation of many advanced centrifuges at Natanz to accumulate enriched uranium.⁴⁶ 

Maximum Pressure, Minimum Effect

President Donald Trump announced his intention to withdraw from the JCPOA during the campaign for his first presidential term in 2015 and proceeded to decertify the agreement while in office in 2018.⁴⁷ The decertification was soon accompanied by the beginning of the maximum pressure campaign and the reimposition of U.S. sanctions that had been lifted for the JCPOA.⁴⁸ To signify his resolve, in January 2020, Trump ordered the killing of IRGC Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani, in response to Soleimani’s direct involvement in attacks against U.S. service members. 

However, during Trump’s first term, the administration did not effectively respond to ongoing Iranian proxy attacks in the region, including against U.S. servicemen. In addition, while the Trump administration attempted to advance a Sunni coalition against Iran, both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates failed to respond to Iran’s attacks against their oil tankers and processing plants. When Iran issued a counterattack to the killing of Soleimani by attacking two Iraqi airbases housing U.S. troops, the Trump administration did not respond. 

Trump only began the reimposition of JCPOA-related sanctions in November 2018 and the Iranian financial sector escaped financial sanctions up until October 2020. Trump’s messaging about his willingness to reenter into a deal with Iran and the nature of his criticisms of the JCPOA were oftentimes contradictory. Trump criticized the content of the JCPOA rather than the idea of U.S. negotiations with Iran as a whole, noting as he decertified the JCPOA that a constructive deal could nonetheless “easily have been struck at the time.”⁴⁹ 

Foreign Minister Zarif noted in an essay at the beginning of the Biden presidency that the Trump administration coincided with Iran expanding its stockpile of low-enriched uranium from 660 to 8,800 pounds and upgrading centrifuges from the older IR-1 models to the more powerful IR-6.⁵⁰ During the transition months between the Trump and Biden administrations, Iran then began the production of highly enriched uranium to a 20-percent purity level.⁵¹  

Iran’s Hardliners Revisited

In 2019, then-candidate Joe Biden vowed to return to the JCPOA and to end the maximum pressure campaign of the first Trump administration. In office, the Biden administration’s approach to Iran included backchannel talks with Iranian leaders without preconditions, conveying the belief that economic gifts would encourage good behavior. President Biden pursued engagement with Iran despite heightened international attention on the repression of the Iranian people, spurred by the murder of Mahsa Amini, a young woman from Iran’s Kurdish minority who was violently detained for allegedly defying the regime’s modesty laws. The Iranian people once again took to the streets, this time in the largest numbers since the Green Movement protests. The Biden administration shirked a direct response and outsourced retribution to multilateral institutions instead, instigating the Iranian government’s removal from the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.⁵² 

Significant errors in the U.S. approach to Iran persisted. Biden’s policy included removing, for a time, the Iran-backed Houthis from the foreign terrorist organization list kept by the Department of State, rescinding snapback UN sanctions at the Security Council, and dissuading Europe from censuring Iran at the IAEA. Under President Biden, Iran’s oil revenue increased from $16 billion in 2020 to $53 billion in 2023.⁵³ The administration did not respond to 78 Iranian attacks on U.S. personnel and vessels in Syria.⁵⁴

Iran Envoy Robert Malley attempted to bring Iran to the negotiating table with the United States for a return to the JCPOA. When this failed, backchannel conversations with Iran allegedly continued.⁵⁵ In 2022, reports emerged of an “understanding” that Iran would limit uranium enrichment in exchange for loosening enforcement of U.S. sanctions and in some cases, waivers on sanctions enforcement.⁵⁶ The suspension of Malley’s clearance in April 2023, as a result of the potential mishandling of classified information, appears to have been the sole cause of the end to further U.S. negotiations with Iran under Biden.

In August 2023, the Biden administration issued a waiver to release $6 billion in oil revenue to Iran in exchange for a prisoner swap which freed detained Americans in Iran.⁵⁷ The funds were frozen assets to be released to Iran for “non-sanctioned purposes” through Qatar.⁵⁸ The Biden administration issued a $10 billion waiver allowing Iran to access the funds from Iraq in March 2024.⁵⁹ 

Uncovering Iran’s Influence Network Within the U.S. Foreign Policy Community

Prior to the release of $6 billion in oil revenue to Iran, Malley was engaged in unofficial talks with the regime and is believed to have held a series of unauthorized meetings with an Iranian diplomat at the UN.⁶⁰ A journalistic investigation by Semafor and Iran International revealed the 2014 creation of a network of academics and think-tank scholars known as the Iran Experts Initiative (IEI) which consulted directly with the Iranian Foreign Ministry to bring regime-aligned experts into positions of influence in think-tanks in the West such as the International Crisis Group, led at the time by Malley.⁶¹ The International Crisis Group is said to have signed a memorandum for “scientific and academic interactions” with an in-house think-tank of the Iranian Foreign Ministry in 2016.⁶² 

The IEI is described as an informal group receiving funds from an unspecified European government and was reportedly founded under the approval of Majid Takht-Ravanchi, a former Iranian UN Ambassador and current Foreign Ministry official.⁶³ Some U.S.-based academics and professionals in the IEI network were hired by the International Crisis Group, with one subsequently hired by the Biden administration to work under Malley.⁶⁴ Malley’s approach to Iran as a lead negotiator of the JCPOA under Obama and as Iran envoy under the Biden administration appears inextricable from his work at the International Crisis Group and his relationship to the IEI.

Khamenei’s Ideological Falsehoods: The Fatwa Against Nuclear Weapons 

Shortly before the Israeli and U.S. attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities, with the ten-year anniversary of the JCPOA approaching, Iran began enriching uranium at 60 percent and wielding increasingly aggressive proxy attacks against American interests in the region.⁶⁵ Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian came into office in July 2024 as a so-called reformist in the aftermath of the regime’s escalated repression of pro-democracy protestors.⁶⁶ Pezeshkian’s election was met with predictable optimism by some members of the U.S. foreign policy community as he indicated his willingness to sign a new nuclear agreement in exchange for sanctions relief and appointed officials from Iran’s JCPOA negotiating team.⁶⁷ However, his “letter to the world” eviscerated the West, and an agent of the IRGC even sought to assassinate President Trump during his 2024 presidential campaign.⁶⁸ Nonetheless, the second Trump administration strove forward in pursuing negotiations with Iran’s Supreme Leader through direct outreach, with Trump writing to Khamenei to offer a two-month deadline for reaching a nuclear agreement, beginning April 12, 2025.⁶⁹

The United States failed in the past to discern Khamenei’s true stance on nuclear weapons. Throughout the period of negotiations that culminated with the JCPOA, Khamenei did not hide that Iran aspired to operate more than one thousand centrifuges for nuclear weapons development.⁷⁰ Khamenei is known to have said: “I’m not a diplomat. I’m a revolutionary. I speak clearly and honestly.”⁷¹ Khamenei alleged he was against the use of nuclear weapons in war, not the development or stockpiling of nuclear weapons.⁷² However, the false narrative in the United States centered around the existence of a fatwa: an Islamic ruling issued by Khamenei against the use of nuclear weapons served to undermine the American negotiating position. During talks in 2004 between Iran and the European Union, Rouhani claimed to have told European leaders that Khamenei had issued a fatwa against acquiring a bomb.⁷³ Accordingly, Iran benefited from the impression that, under Islamic law, it would not seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction and portrayed itself as a rational actor seeking nuclear enrichment for commercial use and peaceful purposes.⁷⁴ As a result of the fatwa saga, Iran’s negotiating hand was strengthened throughout the JCPOA negotiations with Khamenei himself ordering additional red lines, which ultimately caused the United States to yield the requirement of zero nuclear enrichment in 2015. 

Conclusion

In the first months of his second term, President Trump pursued both direct engagement with Iran’s Supreme Leader and a return to the maximum pressure policies of his first administration.⁷⁵ The United States met with Iran on five occasions to attempt to secure the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program within the 60-day deadline Trump set for diplomatic negotiations. Negotiations stalled, and Iran was censured by the International Atomic Energy Agency for the first time in twenty years for its failure to declare nuclear material and activities.⁷⁶ Following the culmination of the 60-day deadline with no agreement, Israel initiated strikes to eliminate Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and scientists, while also targeting Iran’s conventional weapons production and assassinating key IRGC officials and military commanders.⁷⁷ The United States joined the war nine days later, striking the Iranian nuclear sites of Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan.⁷⁸ At the time of writing, assessments suggest Iran’s centrifuge enrichment program has effectively been destroyed.⁷⁹ While residuals remain, such as stocks of 60 percent, 20 percent, and 3-5 percent enriched uranium, as well as centrifuges manufactured but not yet installed at either Natanz or Fordow, its infrastructure to build a nuclear weapon has been severely damaged.⁸⁰ 

The United States failed to secure a solution to Iran’s destabilizing activity through either diplomacy or sanctions. Negotiations did not address the root causes of Khamenei’s stance on nuclear weapons, failing to yield either public agreement from the regime on the dismantlement of its nuclear program or reductions in enrichment and stockpiling. The United States was unable to change Iran’s behavior through non-military means, revealing the impossibility of engaging “moderates” from within the fundamentally hardline and theocratic composition of the regime. Instead, the use of military force has proven thus far to be the sole effective response to Iran’s ongoing efforts to acquire a nuclear weapon.

Tamara Berens is Director of Young Professional Programs at Tikvah. She graduated from King’s College London with a bachelor’s degree in War Studies. Tamara is an alumna of the SSS Iran.

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Image: 3rd Khordad SAM, May 11, 2014, from Fars News Agency. Retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:3rd_Khordad_SAM.jpg, used under Wikimedia Commons.

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[38] Edelman and Takeyh, Revolution and Aftermath, 89. 

[39] Edelman and Takeyh, Revolution and Aftermath, 89. 

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[41] Suzanne Maloney, “For the U.S. and Iran, a Nuclear Accord Upends Old Assumptions,” Brookings, July 15, 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/for-the-u-s-and-iran-a-nuclear-accord-upends-old-assumptions/; U.S. Congress “Major Beneficiaries of the Iran Deal: IRGC and Hezbollah” (September 17, 2015), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-114hhrg96147/html/CHRG-114hhrg96147.htm.

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[43] Edelman and Takeyh, Revolution and Aftermath, 87.

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[46] David Albright and Andrea Stricker, “IAEA Iran Safeguards Report Analysis – Iran Commits Multiple Violations of the Nuclear Deal, Several Non-Reversible,” Institute for Science and International Security, November 13, 2019, https://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/iaea-iran-safeguards-report-analysis.

[47] Mark Landler, “Trump Abandons Iran Nuclear Deal He Long Scorned,” New York Times, May 8, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/world/middleeast/trump-iran-nuclear-deal.html.

[48] U.S. Department of State, “Maximum Pressure Campaign on the Regime in Iran,” (Washington, DC: Office of the Spokesperson, 2019), https://cl.usembassy.gov/advancing-the-u-s-maximum-pressure-campaign-on-iran/.

[49] Donald Trump, “Remarks by President Trump on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,” The White House, May 8, 2018, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-joint-comprehensive-plan-action/.

[50]  Zarif, “Iran Wants the Nuclear Deal It Made.”

[51] Parisa Hafezi and Reuters, “Iran Resumes 20% Enrichment at Fordow amid Rising Tensions with U.S.,” Reuters, January 4, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/china/iran-resumes-20-enrichment-fordow-amid-rising-tensions-with-us-2021-01-04/.

[52] Joe Biden, “Statement from President Joe Biden on the Anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s Death and Iran’s Brutal Crackdown,” The White House, September 15, 2023, https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/09/15/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-the-anniversary-of-mahsa-aminis-death-and-irans-brutal-crackdown/.

[53] U.S. Department of Energy, Report on Iranian Petroleum and Petroleum Product Exports (Washington, DC, United States, October 2024).

[54] Joseph Haboush, “American forces suffered 78 Iranian attacks since 2021: US general,” Al Arabiya, March 23, 2023, https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2023/03/23/American-forces-suffered-78- Iranian-attacks-since-2021-US-general.

[55] Jay Solomon, “Republicans probe if Iran envoy Robert Malley shared classified documents with allies,” Semafor, May 29, 2024, https://www.semafor.com/article/05/28/2024/republicans-probe-if-suspended-iran-envoy-robert-malley-shared-classified-materials-with-political-allies.

[56] Mark Dubowitz, “The JCPOA Negotiations and United States’ Policy on Iran Moving Forward,” Foundation for Defense of Democracies, May 25, 2022, https://www.fdd.org/analysis/testimonies/2022/05/25/jcpoa-negotiations-united-states-policy-iran/.

[57] David Gritten, “US releases $6bn in frozen Iran funds for prisoner swap,” BBC News, September 12, 2023 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-66784817.

[58] Henry Rome, “The Iran Hostage Deal: Clarifying the $6 Billion Transfer,” Washington Institute for Near East Policy (blog), September 18, 2023, https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/iran-hostage-deal-clarifying-6-billion-transfer.

[59] “US renews waiver letting Iraq pay Iran for electricity,” Reuters, November 14, 2023,

https://www.reuters.com/world/us-renews-120-day-waiver-allowing-iraq-pay-iran-electricity-2023-11-14/.

[60] Sadra Torabi, “Exclusive: The secret talks that doomed Rob Malley,” Tehran Times, July 16, 2023 https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/486875/Exclusive-The-secret-talks-that-doomed-Rob-Malley.

[61] Lee Smith, “High-Level Iranian Spy Ring Busted in Washington,” Tablet, October 2, 2023, https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/iran-spy-ring-robert-malley-lee-smith.

[62] Bozorgmehr Sharaferdin, “Inside Tehran’s Soft War,” Iran International, https://content.iranintl.com/en/investigates/inside-tehran-softwar/.

[63] Jay Solomon, “Inside Iran’s Influence Operation,” Semafor, September 26, 2023, https://www.semafor.com/article/09/25/2023/inside-irans-influence-operation.

[64] Solomon, “Inside Iran’s Influence Operation.”  

[65] Laurence Norman, “Why Iran’s Nuclear Advances Make a Deal Harder This Time,” Wall Street Journal, April 8, 2025, https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/why-irans-nuclear-advances-make-a-deal-harder-this-time-4c087097.

[66]  Tom Bennett and BBC Persian, “Masoud Pezeshkian: The Reformist Now Iran’s President-Elect,” BBC, July 8, 2024, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cmm25dq14j3o; Farnaz Fassihi, “Reformist Candidate Wins Iran’s Presidential Election,” The New York Times, July 6, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/05/world/middleeast/iran-election-reformist-wins.html.

[67] Majid Mohammadi, “What Role Will Zarif Play as Pezeshkian’s Strategic Deputy?” Iran International, August 3, 2024, https://www.iranintl.com/en/202408023319.

[68] Masoud Pezeshkian, “My Message to the New World,” Tehran Times, July 12, 2024, https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/501077/My-message-to-the-new-world; U.S. Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs, “Justice Department Announces Murder-For-Hire and Related Charges Against IRGC Asset and Two Local Operatives,” U.S. Department of Justice, November 8, 2024, https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-murder-hire-and-related-charges-against-irgc-asset-and-two.

[69] Barak Ravid, “Scoop: Trump’s letter to Iran included 2-month deadline for new nuclear deal,” Axios, May 19, 2025, https://www.axios.com/2025/03/19/trump-letter-iran-nuclear-deal.

[70] Edelman and Takeyh, Revolution and Aftermath, 88.

[71] Behnam Ben Talebu, “Misreading Khamenei’s Nuclear Role,” War on the Rocks, June 15, 2015, https://warontherocks.com/2015/06/misreading-khameneis-nuclear-role/.

[72] Holly Dagres, “The Nuclear Fatwa That Wasn’t—How Iran Sold the World a False Narrative,” Atlantic Council (blog), May 9, 2024, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/iransource/iran-nuclear-weapons-fatwa-khamenei/.

[73] Dagres, “The Nuclear Fatwa That Wasn’t.”

[74] Mehdi Khalaji, “Apocalyptic Politics: On the Rationality of Iranian Policy,” January 1, 2008, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, https://www.bu.edu/history/files/2015/04/Khalaji-Apocalyptic-Politics-On-the-Rationality-of-Iranian-Policy.pdf.

[75] The White House, “Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Restores Maximum Pressure on Iran,” February 4, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/02/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-restores-maximum-pressure-on-iran/.

[76] Francois Murphy, “Damning IAEA Report Spells Out Past Secret Nuclear Activities in Iran,” Reuters, May 31, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/china/iaea-report-says-iran-had-secret-activities-with-undeclared-nuclear-material-2025-05-31/.

[77] Brian Carter et al., “Iran Update Special Report, Evening Edition,” Institute for the Study of War,June 16, 2025, https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-special-report-june-16-2025-evening-edition.

[78] Brian Carter and Nicholas Carl, “Iranian Calculus and Response Options Following the US Strikes,”Institute for the Study of War, June 23, 2025, https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iranian-calculus-and-response-options-following-us-strikes.

[79] David Albright and Spencer Faragasso, “Post-Attack Assessment of the First 12 Days of Israeli and U.S. Strikes on Iranian Nuclear Facilities,” Institute for Science and International Security, June 24, 2025, https://isis-online.org/isis-reports/post-attack-assessment-of-the-first-12-days-of-israeli-strikes-on-iranian-nuclear-facilities.

[80] Albright and Faragasso, “Post-Attack Assessment.”