In its 47 years of existence, the Islamic Republic has made perhaps two major compromises. The first was its 1988 decision to end the Iran-Iraq war after eight years of fighting and an estimated 200,000 Iranian deaths - a concession Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini famously likened to "drinking poison." The second was the 2015 nuclear deal with Barack Obama. In both cases, Tehran acted under existential economic pressure and was offered a diplomatic exit that did not require abandoning its revolutionary identity.
Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has traced this pattern in The Atlantic, "Hvylya" reports. History suggests that an overconfident Tehran will overplay its hand, Sadjadpour writes, because the regime's ideology compels it to pursue vengeance over advantage even when the national interest demands restraint.
Iran held American diplomats hostage for 444 days, extracting maximum humiliation from the United States at the cost of its own international standing. It prolonged its war with Iraq six years beyond the point when a favorable settlement was achievable. And believing itself the Middle East's new hegemon, it was the lone country to publicly praise Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel - a decision that led to the destruction of its regional proxy network.
Tehran has now begun treating the Strait of Hormuz as its own Panama Canal. It runs a protection racket in which vessel owners are permitted safe passage only by obtaining IRGC pre-approval and paying tolls in Chinese yuan. The regime that came to power in 1979 by seizing the American embassy now holds the global economy hostage, effectively controlling 20 percent of the world's oil exports.
Tehran's stated terms for ending the war include reassurances that it will not be attacked again and reparations for the billions in damages it has endured. But so long as the Islamic Republic's commitment to "Death to America" and the destruction of Israel remains unchanged, neither condition is achievable. No American president or Israeli prime minister will credibly promise not to attack a committed adversary, and the U.S. Congress will never vote for reparations to a government that has spent 47 years fighting America.
So long as Tehran aspires to rebuild its nuclear program, its missile arsenal, and its network of regional proxies, Sadjadpour warns, this war will likely have a sequel. Earlier, "Hvylya" examined why Iran's deterrence collapse makes nuclear weapons more attractive to aspiring states.