For 47 years, the Iranian regime chanted "Death to America" and got away with it. Western interlocutors insisted the slogan was rhetorical. Ali M. Ansari, director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St. Andrews, pushed back on this argument for years. "I used to say, 'I don't think this is helpful,'" he told The Wall Street Journal. Western intermediaries would respond that the regime didn't really mean it. "Well, if they don't mean it, then don't say it. Stop. But they never would."

As "Hvylya" reports, referencing the WSJ's weekend interview with the historian, what changed was a combination of Iranian miscalculation and an American president who broke the pattern. "To be honest, I think they got away with things for so long that they got used to it," Ansari said. The regime didn't count on a president who would break from standard operating procedure, whom they couldn't stall until the next U.S. election.

Iran's path to isolation was largely self-inflicted. The regime lost European sympathy by siding with Russia in Ukraine - a decision that stripped away the diplomatic cover Tehran had relied on for decades. Then it refused to make a plausible offer when Trump returned to office. "The longer they waited, the worse it got," Ansari said. "They could've gotten a deal six months ago. But when ships are waiting outside, the asking price goes up."

The historian described a regime trapped by its own rigidity. Tehran insisted on a "right to enrich uranium" - which "would have more credibility if they respected any other rights as well." Rather than strategic calculation, Ansari saw "a dogmatic ideology and a grievance culture, whereby they've taken a hit for their nuclear program and can't back down." By sheer stubbornness, the regime "basically decided to declare war on the U.S."

The fundamental Western mistake, in Ansari's view, was always treating Iran as marginal to the problem. Commentators focus on what Washington did or didn't do. But the regime's downfall was authored in Tehran, not in Washington - through decades of chanting slogans it supposedly didn't mean, until it met an adversary who took them at face value.

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