U.S. administration officials are still defending the nuclear deal by assuring us that Iran will only use the $50 billion “signing bonus” they expect to receive on the country’s internal needs. No Iranian official has ever promised that, not even to the Iranian people who have been struggling with economic hardships. Yet the U.S. administration has presumed that Iran’s infrastructure is more significant to the regime than hegemony over Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.
Let’s imagine a scenario where Iran decides to spend the windfall on infrastructure and on addressing the needs of the Iranian people, as Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew assured the world it will in an address to the Washington Institute last month. The Iranian people will surely be relieved, and the credibility of the reformists will probably increase. But most significantly, Iran will become a nation with no ambitions for regional dominance. Iran will eventually have to let go of Syria’s Assad, Hezbollah, and all their militias in the region—including those in Yemen and Iraq, because the money is needed for infrastructure and to help rebuild the country’s own economy. The mullahs will then sit down with the world powers to find a realistic political solution for Syria, and stop the bloodshed. Wonderful, isn’t it?
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