We are back at it — negotiations over Iran’s nuclear weapons, possibly with a limited or even a comprehensive war as the other means of dealing with the Islamic Republic. Whatever happens in the coming days and weeks, these negotiations and any resulting arrangement should not give the Tehran regime a license to kill its own population or continue destabilizing the region. To negotiate with Iran on the nuclear issue alone is to repeat the mistakes of the past, granting the regime legitimacy while ignoring the regional machinery of repression and proxy warfare that sustains it.

It has happened before. When a regime feels threatened, either by its own people or by international pressure, weapons of mass destruction become the perfect diversion. Saddam Hussein strung along UN inspectors in the 1990s while crushing uprisings. Muammar Qaddafi rehabilitated his image in the early 2000s by renouncing WMDs. Bashar Assad avoided US intervention in 2013 by agreeing to dismantle his chemical arsenal.

Then there was the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or Iran nuclear deal, a version of which is now being revived. The pattern is simple: declaring readiness to negotiate over nuclear or chemical weapons immediately triggers an administrative reaction involving international organizations and bureaucracies with inspectors, fact-finding missions and rounds of technical negotiations. This gives regimes time and credibility and diverts attention from whatever else they do to their people.

The trick never fails, perhaps for cultural reasons in the West, with generations raised under the influence of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. “Ban the bomb” was a powerful slogan that engaged progressives, artists and politicians around the moral urgency of preventing a nuclear war. If you were not brought up wearing the peace symbol on your blue jeans and humming John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Imagine,” then your parents were. 

These were the icons and the hymn of CND for a rebel generation during the Cold War, the Vietnam conflict, student protests, women’s movements and beyond. Films such as “Planet of the Apes,” “Dr. Strangelove” and “Threads” further dramatized the problem and it all became the primary moral cause in the West. Nuclear talks were seen as progress. CND was synonymous with universal good.

It seems Iran’s communications experts understood that and used it effectively — and they had precedents from which to learn. One cannot exaggerate the cost of such diversions, not only for the countries involved but also the region. We are still suffering the consequences.

Saddam’s regime was at its weakest and about to fall in 1991. After the Iran-Iraq War, the invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf War that liberated Kuwait, he was facing a countrywide uprising. That is when he agreed to the WMD inspections scheme, which kept the world busy while he was allowed to brutally crush the revolt. Inspectors were in the country while this was happening. His troops entered towns and villages and executed people to reestablish terror and regain control.

The sanctions imposed on Iraq only helped Saddam consolidate his power, while they crippled the economy, destroyed the health system and resulted in poverty and malnutrition. Refugees flooded into Jordan, Syria and Lebanon and the middle class was mostly eradicated. The combined effect was a society impoverished, fragmented and terrorized, with cultural devastation layered atop humanitarian catastrophe. Iraq is still recovering from that blunder in 1991.

In 2013, Assad’s regime had lost control of most of Syria and the loyalty of the army. The country was about to fall. In addition, he had crossed a red line that US President Barack Obama had set the year before. The red line itself was an excuse not to intervene after a major massacre in Syria, a carte blanche with conditions: It allowed the regime to continue its carnage as long as it did not use chemical weapons. It was the chemical weapons that were the red line, not the massacres. But in August 2013, an attack on Ghouta, near Damascus, used sarin gas and caused mass casualties, meaning Obama was again under pressure to intervene. To avoid this, the Russians mediated and proposed a dismantling of Assad’s chemical weapons arsenal.

The trick worked again: the intervention was called off and the inspectors came in, doing their work and completely ignoring the fact that Iran, Russia and Hezbollah came to the rescue. More than 6 million refugees were forced out of the country and a similar number were internally displaced, while Aleppo, Homs and Eastern Ghouta were reduced to rubble through aerial bombardment and artillery campaigns. Prolonged starvation sieges in places such as Madaya and Ghouta became notorious, while tens of thousands of Syrians disappeared into regime prisons, where torture was systemic.

Fighters affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from Iraq and Hezbollah from Lebanon provided the ground forces, while Russia supplied the air power and diplomatic cover, ensuring Assad’s survival. The opposition was crushed and the country destroyed, leaving the regime entrenched but presiding over a devastated, depopulated country. When you think of the damage done to Syria, of the refugee crisis or the EU crisis itself, remember that this was the consequence of another WMD deal.

Iran perfected this tactic with the 2015 nuclear deal. While the world obsessed over centrifuges and enrichment levels, Tehran expanded its proxy network, propped up Assad and entrenched itself in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Palestine. The nuclear deal gave Iran sanctions relief and diplomatic respectability, while its IRGC grew stronger in the shadows.

The US proudly signed the JCPOA on condition that it did not bring up any of Iran’s interventions in the region. It even withdrew from Yemen in denial that Iran had anything to do with the Houthis. The consequences became clear after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, when Iran’s proxies acted in concert across multiple fronts. Lobbyists for the Iran deal managed to raise funds from both the isolationist right and the non-interventionist left and we are still paying the price of another WMD diversion.

Military and technical experts will be turned loose to confuse us but the focus must be that the Iranian regime should be engaged on the full spectrum of its behavior — from domestic repression to proxy wars — or we risk repeating the same costly mistakes. Nobody can afford another nuclear deal charade.

The lesson is simple: Whatever happens next with Iran, nuclear diplomacy cannot be used as a diversion from regional realities. WMD diplomacy must also involve the interests of the Arab states and engage them in it. The JCPOA was neither joint nor a plan of action. Such negotiations have worked as a diversionary tactic for endangered regimes from Saddam to Assad. But for Iran, this may be one time too many.

Nadim Shehadi is an economist and political adviser. X: @Confusezeus

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