What lies ahead for Iran and its foreign activities will have significant consequences, not only for millions of Iranians, but also for Ukraine, Russia, much of the Middle East, and the foreign policies of Western governments.
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It has been a turbulent year for Iran.
In a year that some hoped would see the Iran nuclear deal revived and diplomacy with the West prosper, Iran instead strengthened ties with Russia and cracked down on a popular protest movement led by women.
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What lies ahead for the country and its foreign activities will have significant consequences not only for millions of Iranians, but also for Ukraine, Russia, much of the Middle East and the foreign policies of Western governments.
The Biden administration went from encouraging negotiations to revive the Iran nuclear deal to imposing further sanctions on Tehran and condemning it for providing deadly weapons and training Russian forces fighting in Ukraine. Iran’s foreign ministry denies knowing about Iranian arms transfers to Russia, despite evidence showing Iranian-made drones wreaking havoc in Ukrainian cities.
And the country of 85 million people is in the midst of a protest movement that has been described as the biggest challenge the Islamic Republic’s government has faced in decades. Meanwhile, its economy is booming and it’s currently enriching uranium to its highest level ever – meaning Iran has never come closer to being able to produce nuclear bombs.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi greets Russian President Vladimir Putin July 19, 2022. Putin likely wanted to show Moscow still matters in the Middle East by visiting Iran, said John Drennan of the US Institute of Peace.
Sergei Savostyanov | AFP | Getty Images
“2023 will be a pivotal year for Iran,” Ali Vaez, Iran Project Manager at the nonprofit Crisis Group, told CNBC. “The economy is in more trouble than ever, society is more angry than ever, and the country is more isolated than ever.”
“The Islamic Republic is where the Soviet Union was in the early, not late 1980s,” Vaez said. “It is a regime that is ideologically bankrupt, economically broken and politically paralyzed.”
“However,” he added, “it still has the will to fight.”
Nuclear deal: too far away?
As early as 2021, Rafael Grossi, chief of the United Nations nuclear regulator, told reporters that “only countries that make bombs” are enriching uranium to 60% of Iran’s levels — just a technical step away from the weapons-grade quality that is being used is 90%. Purity.
Under the Iranian nuclear deal of 2015 – which included the US and other powers and lifted economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbing its nuclear program – Iran’s uranium enrichment was capped at 3.67%, enough for a civilian nuclear energy program.
A picture taken on Nov. 10, 2019 shows an Iranian flag at Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant during an official ceremony marking the start of work on a second reactor at the plant.
ATTA KENARE | AFP via Getty Images
“The prospects for the revival of the JCPOA in 2023 are bleak,” said Henry Rome, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, referring to the agreement by its official acronym, which stands for Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Rather than canceling it outright in response to Iran’s apparent support for Russia and crackdown on protesters, “an ‘expand and do’ attitude towards the nuclear deal is likely to persist for some time,” Rom added. Negotiations have stalled since September.
The Trump administration pulled the US out of the deal in 2018 and re-imposed tough sanctions on Iran that both hurt its economy and prompted its administration to speed up nuclear development. And the prospects of the Biden administration reviving the deal are rapidly shrinking.
Moreover, time is running out before anything can be salvaged at all – key nuclear limitations of the deal expire at the end of 2023 when “sunset clauses” kick in.
“The actual JCPOA will be increasingly obsolete by 2023,” said Ryan Bohl, a senior Middle East and North Africa analyst at Rane. And he added: “Neither Europe nor the United States wants to offer sanctions relief to a regime that is actively cracking down on protesters.”
Negotiators may have to start from scratch, and Western signatories to the deal will likely want to see a solution to the protest movement first, some analysts say.
Meanwhile, the West announces new sanctions, while Iran continues to press ahead with its nuclear development, creating a widening rift between the two sides.
What’s next for the Iranian protest movement?
Nationwide protests, which began in mid-September and quickly spread to numerous cities across Iran, were sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish Iranian woman who died in police custody after being arrested for allegedly opposing the violated Iran’s strict headscarf rules. The riots grew into a full-blown movement demanding the removal of the Islamic Republic, Iran’s strict theocratic government.
But after almost four months and a campaign of bloody crackdowns and executions by the state, the question remains: how long will the protests last?
A protester holds a portrait of Mahsa Amini during a demonstration in support of Amini, a young Iranian woman who died after being arrested by the Islamic Republic’s morality police on Istiklal Avenue in Istanbul on September 20, 2022 in Tehran.
Ozan Kose | AFP | Getty Images
“The four forces to watch in Iran’s protests in 2023 are roads, strikes, sanctions and security forces,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He expects there to be ongoing protests against the Islamic Republic in 2023 despite the government having an overwhelming advantage in the use of force.
“The regime retains all repressive tools and will increasingly use them,” he said, adding that Iranian demands for political change would inevitably lead to more internal instability.
Most Iran analysts polled by CNBC expect the demonstrations to continue in some form, but predictions about their intensity and effectiveness vary.
While the protests could still take unexpected turns, “protesters have yet to garner significant, sustained support in key economic sectors or exit the security services,” noted Rome.
As for Rane’s Ryan Bohl, the most likely outcome is that the protests will “ultimately be suppressed and disbanded”. The second result, he said, is that the movement will become institutionalized, transformed into a viable opposition movement, and able to extort concessions from the regime.
The third and “least likely” — but still not impossible — outcome over the next year is that “the protest movement will escalate to other sections of Iranian society, causing divisions within the regime that could actually threaten its survival,” Bohl said.
Weapons for Russia
The latest conflict between Iran and the West came amid the Russo-Ukrainian war in the form of deadly Iranian drones used by Russian forces to attack Ukraine.
That has already led to further US and EU sanctions against Iran – but that is unlikely to stop growing cooperation between the two increasingly isolated countries.
“Iran cannot afford to alienate Russia,” said Vaez of the Crisis Group. “The West needs to be creative to find a way” to slow and limit the types of weapons it can transfer to Russia, he said — something already underway as the Biden administration reports is working to cut off Iran’s access to foreign components of the weapons.
Ukraine has accused Iran of supplying Russia with drones used to attack Kyiv.
Sopa Pictures | Light Rocket | Getty Images
Still, “more drones and missiles and technical cooperation on military matters are likely,” Bohl said, in addition to deeper trade ties to create a “sanctions-proof trade network.”
That will entail a diplomatic cost, which Tehran appears willing to bear, though it’s unclear what it will get in return – cash, arms, technology, or a combination of these.
Anyway, “Iran will likely continue to play hardball in 2023,” Ben Taleblu said, adding, “I fully expect Russia and Iran to further tighten security, political and economic ties in 2023.”
“An increasingly risk-tolerant political elite may feel unstoppable abroad when faced with challenges at home,” he said. “Should Iran proliferate ballistic missiles and not just drones to Russia for use in Ukraine, it would be further evidence of this perception.”