The prevailing consensus in Washington, articulated most recently by the Trump administration’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, rests on a fundamental category error.
It assumes that the Iranian regime is a rational, utility-maximizing actor that will, when faced with the specter of total collapse, trade its ideological soul for its material skin.
Witkoff’s ledger of Iranian woes is, at first glance, compelling: a crushing economic contraction, the military ignominy of the "12-Day War" with Israel, the surgical destruction of their nuclear infrastructure last June, and a populace in open, blood-soaked rebellion.
From a Western, neo-liberal perspective, the "Great Bargain" is the only logical exit. Yet, this assumes that Ali Khamenei is playing the same game of geopolitical chess. He is not. He is presiding over a Byzantine structure where "reform" is not a lifeboat, but a torpedo.
