Faulty Assumptions About Iran Have Driven a Failed U.S. Policy
Believing that the clerical regime could be pragmatic was a mistake.
By Steven A. Cook via Foreign Policy
JANUARY 15, 2026
Iran is once again on fire. For the better part of the last month, Iranians have been taking to the streets in large numbers to demand change. The proximate cause for the protests was spiraling inflation, but as the crowds grew, Iranians clamored for the end of the Islamic regime.
Despite the avalanche of speculation, no one knows what will happen in Iran. That is the nature of popular uprisings, they are unpredictable. To many analysts, journalists, pundits, and academics, this round of protests feels different from previous ones in 2009, 2017, 2019, and 2022—and maybe they are. Or maybe they just seem that way because the policy community has failed for decades to understand the nature of the Islamic Republic.
The stakes are so high in Iran that even with protesters still out on the streets and the outcome of the current uprising unknown, it is a good time for analysts to reexamine the assumptions that have been the foundation of Washington’s failed approach to the country—and not just Washington’s but the West’s more generally. My goal is not to name and shame. There’s so much of that online that it’s hard to learn from past mistakes, bad assumptions, and new information. It is particularly important for the foreign-policy community to update its assumptions now because Iran is changing. Even if the regime does not fall, the country will be different from what it was like on Dec. 28, 2025, the day the protests began.
So, what were the assumptions that formed the basis of the United States’ approach to Iran over the last three decades? Iran was believed to be pragmatic. The revolutionary ardor of its leadership was actually a rhetorical cover for an Iran that was practical and realistic. This framing led to the notion that Iran’s leaders were susceptible to American, or Western, diplomacy and financial incentives. Building on the idea that the Iranian supreme leader and his advisors—with whom the United States could do business—was the notion that they wanted to be integrated into the international community more than they wanted to repress their population and dominate the region. Therefore, supporting the Iranian opposition would be self-defeating and not in the United States’ interest. Besides, the opposition was divided. Support for Reza Pahlavi, the former shah’s son, is broader among Iranian exiles than it is in Iran itself, so the story went. Given recent events, it’s clear that these assumptions were, well, silly. Yet these were the ideas that framed former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s “dual containment,” nuclear negotiations (which began under former President George W. Bush), the Obama administration’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and Vice President J.D. Vance’s version of an “America First” approach to Iran.
A full-on Foucauldian “archaeology of knowledge” is not necessary to figure out where these ideas come from and how they have been reinforced. They stem from the preferences of people who have power in Washington (both Democrats and Republicans), who they choose as their interlocutors, and how they imagine the world. The result is that certain Iranian expats get to share their views with senior U.S. officials, opine on the media, and participate in war games and other simulations with various U.S. government agencies. These have always fascinated me because the folks playing Iran (I tend to be “Egypt,” which is fun) always portray decision-making in Tehran as supremely pragmatic in a way that never meets a real-world test. And yet, this is the kind of thinking to which military officers and members of the intelligence community are often exposed.
Of course, it is possible to enlist the expertise of Iranian expats who have very different views of the Iranian regime. Indeed, one of the knocks on the expat community is that it is hopelessly divided. Yet the people who tend to have a more jaundiced view of the idea that the supreme leader is both pragmatic and open to some accommodation with the United States are rarely at the table, underscoring how the ideas that have animated U.S.-Iran policy are reinforced in Washington and the media.
Another reason for the faulty assumptions that have guided U.S. foreign policy on Iran is Operation Iraqi Freedom. People in Washington are haunted by the invasion and occupation of Iraq. And because regime change was extremely costly there, the United States should do everything possible to avoid regime change in Iran, the thinking goes. This column is not an argument for regime change, but in the process of closing it off as an option, the foreign-policy community rationalized why it was unnecessary to begin with. And that narrative was based on assumptions that the Iranian leadership was pragmatic and willing to make accommodations with Washington.
The Beltway herd then reinforces these ideas. U.S. President Barack Obama was not the first American leader to reach out to Iran. In President George H.W. Bush’s inaugural address, he told Americans that “goodwill begets goodwill,” but his targeted audience was the Iranian leadership. Clinton sought reconciliation with Iran after Mohammad Khatami came to power in 1997. Although everyone remembers George W. Bush’s “axis of evil” speech, which included the unholy trinity of North Korea, Iraq, and Iran, people forget that his administration supported European overtures to Iran at the end of his second term, and the United States had participated in multilateral nuclear negotiations with Iran in Geneva.
Obama’s outreach went further and was more successful than his predecessor—the result was the JCPOA, which, despite denials at the time, was the means by which the president and his advisors believed they could build a new relationship with the Islamic Republic. There was no real evidence that the Iranian leadership actually wanted a rapprochement, but the Obama administration set the agenda in Washington. Much of the foreign-policy community supported Obama’s approach. There were, of course, tenacious critics of his Iran policy, but Obama’s deputy national security advisor, Ben Rhodes, got it backward when he opined that the Washington-based analytic community was of one mind in opposition to the JCPOA and advocating for war. Some thought the JCPOA was a bad idea and were vocal about it, but many more analysts, journalists, pundits, former officials, and editors were in favor. Support for Obama’s approach was wide, but it is unclear how deep it was. There is a sort of social network effect that is always operating inside the Beltway. And if one wanted to remain a member in good standing in the club of Obama supporters, one had to say nice things about the JCPOA regardless of its shortcomings.
This, in turn, led to the “redding” and “blueing” of the Middle East in U.S. political discourse. The countries that opposed an accommodation with the Islamic Republic were Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and especially Israel. And because Republicans also opposed the JCPOA, these U.S. partners became identified with the GOP. For the Democrats in power at the time (and ever since), Saudi, Emirati, and Israeli views on the U.S.-Iran rapprochement—particularly after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2015 address to the U.S. Congress—were regarded as bad faith rather than genuine concern about how their security would be affected by the changes that the United States was forging in the region. But it turns out that Saudi, Emirati, and Israeli skepticism of the United States’ approach to Iran was warranted. The debate over whether it was wise for U.S. President Donald Trump to break out of the JCPOA will never be settled, but it seems clear that U.S. partners in the region had a better grasp of the nature of the Iranian regime than the foreign-policy community in Washington.
So, now what? It should be obvious to everyone that it is long past time to reframe how much of this community views the Iranian regime. Central to this new understanding is the organic connection between the repressiveness of the clerical system and Tehran’s aggressive approach to the region. Both are part of what makes the Islamic Republic the Islamic Republic. U.S. diplomacy and goodwill are not going to overcome the ontology of the Iranian regime. Once that is understood, it will be clear that the negotiations the Iranian foreign minister is currently offering are a ruse. Talks are a lifeline to a regime that has lost all credibility and legitimacy. Not only does this undercut U.S. interests in the region, but it also undermines the Iranian protesters, whose cause Trump has now taken up.
Iran policy has become so complicated in recent decades largely because American assumptions have never tacked with reality. The current uprisings throughout Iran are a golden opportunity to see the Islamic regime as it is, not as the United States wants it to be.
Steven did not use Artificial Intelligence to generate this content.
Steven is the author of The End of Ambition: America’s Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East.
