The notion of there being a “balance of terror”, in the region and beyond, is important. And the Americans are preventing it by trying to divide the Europeans. The Iranians want to force the Europeans to break from the US, which is not going to happen, but they are still unrealistically expecting it. Right now, everyone is waiting to see what Europe will do, and both the Americans and Iranians are trying to force Europeans to make a decision. With this mutual deterrence situation, both sides know – or think – that they could inflict tremendous harm on each other. Iranians consider that they have established a “balance of terror”: they are aware that the US can attack them, either directly or via proxies somewhere in the Middle East, but the US has a lot of assets spread out over the Middle East and beyond, which Iranians believe they could also hit. What is surprising is that in Iran nobody seems to be worried about it – neither hardliners nor moderates, not even in academia. Hide FootnoteThere has been some discussion in Europe and the US about what will happen next: now that the US has withdrawn, will Europe do so? Will Iran withdraw? And if it does, what happens next? Will there be war or an attempt at regime change in Iran? Nobody knows but everybody is talking about all the possibilities. People have a harder time making ends meet, and it will have a longterm impact: those who were always opposed to the nuclear deal are generating a consensus in society in the belief that they cannot trust the US. The sanctions are not visible in Iran but are visible in people’s pockets, because the rial has devalued tremendously. Not even under Obama, who lifted the sanctions, and less so under the Trump administration, which came into power against the nuclear deal. The problem is that Iran never saw the economic benefits of the nuclear deal. Since the JCPOA’s implementation three years ago, Iran has been in full compliance with its obligations under the nuclear deal. Following the recent withdrawal by the United States (US) from the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the re-imposition of sanctions, the Iran situation is becoming tense.
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