Iran’s Hard-Liners Believe They’re Winning on Nuclear Weapons

Until recently, Mr. Khamenei had to battle Iranian presidents asserting their own agenda. Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani (1989-97), who made Mr. Khamenei supreme leader in 1989, always wanted to do everything his way. Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005) sought liberal reforms, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-13) economic justice, and Hassan Rouhani (2013-21) global engagement and foreign investment.

It’s different now. A year into his tenure, Ebrahim Raisi, a political nonentity, limits himself to speeches on good governance. In practice, the office of the supreme leader has fully subsumed the presidency. The theocracy has shed any pretense of internal debate—a centuries-old tradition within the religious schools—in favor of a modern Middle Eastern dictatorship inextricably wedded to an increasingly harsh Islamist creed.

American politicians, mesmerized by economics, often think of foreign policy as a corporate transaction. Mr. Khamenei is neither impressed by sanctions nor enticed by financial rewards. He recently said, “In the economic area, indicators are not good . . . but the economy is not the only criterion for power, progress and success.” Mr. Khamenei is planning less to expand Iran’s economy than to insulate it from global markets ruled by the West.

By relying on internal resources and trade with China, the Islamic Republic may become poorer, but it will be independent. Signs of national strength, in Mr. Khamenei’s telling, are the revolution’s expansion abroad, spiritual vitality and mastery of nuclear science. As Ali Motahari, a pragmatic hard-liner from a renowned clerical family, recently made clear, the development of a bomb would allow Iran to intimidate its enemies more effectively. It is the most assured path to regional predominance on the cheap—Iranian-subsidized Arab Shiite militias and the nuke make an excellent, relatively inexpensive combination for destabilizing the Middle East. Mr. Khamenei, who despite his supposed “fatwa” against the bomb approved nuclear weaponization in the 1990s, won’t trade away these accomplishments to Americans brandishing carrots.

The war in Ukraine has paradoxically reinforced the Islamic Republic’s paranoia. Iran’s diplomats ritualistically support Russia while calling for a cease-fire. Yet in the hard-line Iranian echo chamber, the war is another indication of the cost of trusting America. In this conspiracy theory, Washington deliberately made Ukraine believe that it could be part of the West, dangling before it membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. That U.S. ruse was meant to provoke a Russian invasion. Ukraine is simply another American plot to weaken Russia and galvanize Europe against Mr. Putin.

“It was the U.S. that dragged Ukraine to this point,” the supreme leader opined, “naturally, interfering in . . . [its] domestic affairs . . ., organizing rallies against governments, launching velvet revolutions and color coups d’état.” Mr. Khamenei, who kept a keen eye on the crack-up of the Soviet empire, likely has made a connection between Kyiv’s decision to give up its nuclear weapons in 1994 and Russia’s invasions later.

Arms control for the supreme leader was never about rejoining the community of nations, which he describes as Western-dominated. Initially it was an experiment, giving Mr. Rouhani a chance to show that Iran could be richer and endowed with a massive, sanctions-free, weapons-capable nuclear program. Now it’s an occasion for Americans to plead with Iran’s envoys and offer supplications. The proximity talks are themselves an exercise in American humiliation, since U.S. diplomats aren’t allowed to meet their Iranian counterparts.

For Mr. Khamenei, the indispensable next step for Mr. Biden is clear: Recognize the Revolutionary Guards, who helped to wreck Syria, colonize Lebanon, and maul America in Iraq, as a legitimate national army. If the American president refuses to do so, arms control is dead. This isn’t a problem in Tehran. It may not be a problem in Washington. If the administration allows the status quo to continue—no deal, never-dead diplomacy, restrained sanctions enforcement, no threat of war, increasing hope that Mr. Khamenei’s “nuclear fatwa” is real—then Tehran’s frequent mocking of America as a former Middle Eastern power plays on fact, not fiction.