Both sides must acknowledge that they will not achieve their goals through the policies they have adopted hitherto. The last eight years have seen no progress in reducing Iran’s constraining impact on US aims in the region and the threat it poses to Israel’s security. The US may already have recognized this and Iran too is now closer to acknowledgement. Despite its triumphalist rhetoric about its rising power, Iran is unable at present to make the breakthroughs it needs in achieving external security and domestic development, advancing its standing in the world and gaining full acceptance in its region and beyond.
I think this paragraph makes a huge, glaring mistake in analysis. Iran, by most accounts, has made progress on its nuclear weapons program. To the extent that Iran's leadership believes the nuclear weapons program will achieve external security, advance its standing in the world, and permit it to gain full acceptance in its region and beyond it has succeeded. What matters is not what the authors and Western academics think is the best route to external security and acceptance, but rather what the Ayatollahs believe is.
A nuclear weapon provides almost full-proof defensive security. As much as people hate to admit it and despite the bad precedent it always sets, the world negotiates with nuclear powers. See North Korea. In contrast, Syria is a pain in the ass in the region too, and we don't have a Quartet framework to negotiate with them. Why? Because they aren't trying to build nuclear fucking weapons.
Are the authors of the paper completely ignorant of the fact that they are making questionable assumptions and then projecting those assumptions onto the Iranian leadership?
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