Supporters of a nuclear deal with Iran frequently contend that the subsequent benefits to the Iranian economy will strengthen the hand of moderates within the Iranian government. Reuel Marc Gerecht contends that although there are indeed a more pragmatic faction (led by current president Hassan Rouhani) and a more extreme faction associated with the Revolutionary Guards, the pragmatists are equally enthusiastic about terrorism:
It is entirely conceivable that Barack Obama will engineer what has been unthinkable in Iranian politics: a sustainable alignment between the technocrats and the Revolutionary Guards. In foreign policy, [however,] this will likely translate into more, and more skillful, Iranian adventurism. . . . .
[The] odds are high that the Iranian president hasn’t become, as President Obama wants to believe, a robed, white-turbaned, non-revolutionary, economic pragmatist who must deliver the goods to his constituents. When Obama looks at the relationship between the [Iranian] regime and Hizballah and sees that the regime will send missiles to its proxy even “when [its] economy is in the tank,” he unwittingly alights upon the truth: money doesn’t make the Iranian world go ’round. It’s striking that such an intellectual politician, who can quickly list the great minds who’ve shaped him, downplays or ignores the formative intellectual forces that have guided the Islamic Republic’s ruling clergy for four decades.
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