According to many supporters of the nuclear deal with Iran, Tehran is deeply divided between “moderates” and “hardliners.” Thus, we are told that the hardliners take Americans hostage while the moderates free them, and that the lifting of sanctions will inevitably strengthen the moderates. This misunderstanding, writes Michael Rubin, has animated American Iran policy since 1979, and has always led to damaging conclusions:
The simple fact is that sometimes [America’s] adversaries use fluency in English or their American experience less to embrace Western values and more to learn better how to pull the wool over the eyes of the U.S. Likewise, the notion that [Iran’s supposedly moderate president Hassan] Rouhani’s internal struggles are just beginning is based on an assumption that he sincerely wants to wage factional struggle to moderate the regime, rather than simply to project an image of moderation to relieve pressure. Again, it’s the tried and true good-cop, bad-cop strategy that Tehran has played to great effect. Nor is the fact that the Guardian Council, [Iran’s highest governing body], has banned 60 percent of candidates seeking to run for parliament [anything] new. . . .
Rouhani became president—likely with some regime massaging of the returns to give him a first-round victory—with one goal: to relieve the financial pressure under which the Iranian government labored.
This is not to suggest that factions do not exist; they do in all countries. . . . But just because factions exist does not mean that they represent true debate about the character or ideology of the regime. To believe they do is to be guilty of projecting a Western sense of political debate onto our adversaries, and that is a recipe not for success but rather for the continued failure of U.S. intelligence and diplomacy.
Read more on AEI: https://www.aei.org/publication/the-iran-factional-delusion/