Mohammad Amin Ahmadi Informed Comment
In his speech at the United Nations General Assembly on September 22, U.S. President Donald Trump said that before both major stages of the war with Iran, he had given Tehran opportunities to reach a deal and accept Washington’s conditions. Iran refused, he said, and the United States then launched Operation Midnight Hammer and Operation Epic Fury. Yet even after these military operations, Trump said that a deal with Iran was still possible.
Trump’s account brings a larger question: Why has increasing pressure on Iran failed to produce the kind of concessions Washington expected?
Iran has faced years of severe sanctions, high inflation, economic disruption and restrictions on its oil exports and access to international finance. Ordinary life has been affected by these pressures. The country has also now experienced two major stages of direct military confrontation. Yet Tehran has still not accepted what the Trump administration describes as a “complete” agreement.
This cannot simply be explained as Iranian stubbornness. Iran has negotiated before and has accepted significant compromises. The 2015 nuclear agreement itself showed that Tehran could make major concessions when they were part of a reciprocal bargain. The question, therefore, is not why Iran refuses to negotiate. It is why Iran refuses to accept a one-sided agreement under pressure.
A Strategic Culture Shaped by History
Part of the answer may lie in Iran’s strategic culture.
Strategic culture refers to the historical experiences and political ideas that shape how a country understands security, sovereignty, power and relations with other states. Every country has such a culture, but these cultures develop differently according to geography, history, wars and foreign intervention.
Iran has a particularly long experience of foreign invasion and external pressure. Its geographical position has repeatedly placed it at the center of conflicts between major powers. Alexander the Great conquered Persia. Centuries later, the Arab conquest brought the Sasanian Empire to an end. The Mongol invasions again brought massive destruction and political upheaval.
These were major military defeats. Iran was conquered, and in different periods it remained under foreign political control. Yet conquest did not erase Iranian political and cultural identity. Persian language and culture survived, political institutions were rebuilt, and Iran repeatedly reconstructed itself after periods of foreign invasion.
This does not mean that there has been one unchanged Iranian strategic culture from ancient Persia to the present. Modern Iran is obviously very different from ancient Persia. But a longer historical experience matters because repeated encounters with foreign invasion and intervention helped create a strong sensitivity toward sovereignty, independence and national dignity.
This is important when looking at Iran’s behavior today.
Resistance by the Islamic Republic is often explained mainly through religion and ideology. These factors clearly matter. But ideology alone cannot explain the broader pattern. Iranian resistance to foreign domination existed long before Islam, political Islam or the Islamic Republic. Persian resistance to Alexander, for example, obviously had nothing to do with modern religious ideology.
The argument, therefore, is that historical experience appears to have made the idea of accepting foreign demands under direct pressure particularly difficult.
The Difference Between a Deal and Surrender
This distinction is central.
Iran can negotiate. Iran can compromise. Iran can accept restrictions and make concessions when it receives something in return.
But there is an important difference between a negotiated bargain and a concession imposed by force.
For Tehran, an agreement can be politically acceptable when it is presented as an exchange between two sovereign states. It becomes much harder when the agreement is presented as the result of sanctions, military threats and economic or naval pressure.
In such circumstances, the problem is not simply the material cost of the agreement. It is also what accepting the agreement means for sovereignty, political legitimacy and national dignity.
This may help explain why more pressure does not necessarily produce more concessions.
Washington may assume that increasing the cost of resistance will eventually force Iran to accept its demands. But pressure can also increase the political cost of compromise. The more an agreement looks like surrender to external pressure, the harder it may become for Iranian leaders to present that agreement as an acceptable national decision.
A country’s strategic culture affects how it responds to those costs.
Iran is not unique in this regard. Many countries have strong ideas about sovereignty, dignity and resistance to foreign domination. American history itself provides an obvious example: the thirteen colonies fought a long war against British rule rather than accepting political subordination simply because Britain was the stronger power. The same principle can produce very different responses in different countries but it is obvious that it’s not equal everywhere. For example, A recent security agreement involving the United States, Denmark and Greenland, has expanded the framework for American military presence in Greenland, while Danish and Greenlandic officials have stressed that sovereignty remains unchanged.
The comparison is not about which country has greater dignity. It shows that the meaning of a concession depends on a country’s history, alliances, political system and strategic culture.
What This Means for Washington
This may be the central problem in the current U.S.-Iran negotiations.
The United States may have enormous leverage over Iran. But leverage does not automatically tell Washington how that leverage will be translated into concessions.
If the objective is to force Iran to accept a “complete agreement” on American terms, more pressure may continue to produce resistance rather than compromise. If, however, the objective is an actual negotiated settlement, the agreement may need to be structured as a reciprocal bargain in which Iran can also claim meaningful gains, like what we saw in the MoU.
Photo by Mehrshad Rajabi on Unsplash
The latest talks in New York illustrate this difference. Trump described his meeting with Iranian representatives as productive, while Tehran said it had not abandoned its conditions, including an end to military attacks, the naval blockade and the economic war. Iran has also linked the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to the fulfillment of its demands.
The two sides, therefore, may still disagree not only about what the agreement should contain, but also about what an agreement actually is. For Washington, pressure may be a tool for obtaining concessions. For Tehran, accepting demands under pressure may cross a different line: from bargaining into submission.
That distinction may be one of the keys to understanding why American pressure has so far failed to produce the “complete” agreement Trump seeks.
The lesson is not that pressure does not work against Iran. It clearly imposes costs. The lesson is that pressure and surrender are not the same thing. If Washington wants a diplomatic outcome, it may need to understand not only how much pressure Iran can withstand, but also what kind of agreement Iran can accept without seeing it as a loss of sovereignty and national dignity.
Juan Cole’s Informed Comment delivers independent, expert analysis of war, the Middle East, climate change, and U.S. foreign policy. Help sustain this work
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