Our old friends at the National Iranian American Council put out an interesting opinion piece claiming an undivided Iranian regime leadership when it came to matters of national policy, especially the prospects of a nuclear deal with the P5+1. Authored by well-known regime apologist Reza Marashi, the piece posits the idea that the regime’s top leaders, Ali Khamenei and Hassan Rouhani, wanted to rifts between the two.

It’s an odd statement to make considering Rouhani was Khamenei’s handpicked choice for the job in a ballot cleansed of all other potential opponents in a nation whose prior elections were widely regarded by international observers as rigged. In a strictly controlled society where the religious edicts of the mullahs in charge carry supreme weight and dissident is harshly and swiftly punished by arrest, imprisonment and execution, the idea of dissent of any kind is laughable.

As the saying goes, no puppet moves without a puppet master and every action taken in Iran has a sanctioned purpose by the ruling religious cadres. In fact, if we compare other totalitarian regimes throughout history, it is clear the one facet they all share is an ability to project a united front no matter what is happening behind closed doors.

Outside observers have long been relegated to tea leaf reading of close examinations of photos at ceremonial events to see which leader in waiting was standing next to whom. Iran’s regime is no different where every opinion by an outside analyst is usually confounded by a system wholly devoted to its own peculiar inner workings of dogma.

What I find most interesting is the stretch of imagination Marashi takes in hinting that the reign of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in some way the work of an eccentric mad man and not representative of the Islamic state. He forgets to mention Ahmadinejad’s election was fixed so he was clearly the regime’s man and his re-election indicated Iran’s mullahs were all in with the idea of showing the West an iron fist of determination.

When that approach failed to yield any benefits and only convinced the rest of the world that Iran’s leadership was delusional, the mullahs huddled and changed tack by offering a perceived more moderate face in Rouhani who has a smiling face busy with selfies, tweets and Facebook posts.

By the Iranian regime’s true intentions remain solidly rooted in the hardline extremism exhibited through its near fanatical support of terror groups and the spread of extreme Islamic groups worldwide, as well as the even harsher crackdown at home on political dissent. It has been left up to the Marashi, Trita Parsi, Tyler Cullis and others of the world to build the perception of an Iran united behind the idea of peace and moderation.

Incidentally, the irony of the Iranian military undertaking exercises this week and blowing up a replica of an American aircraft carrier is just reaffirmation of Iranian regime’s near schizophrenic approach to displaying to the world its eagerness for a deal, but determination to continue fighting “The Great Satan.”

The more things change in Iran, the more things really just stay the same.

The one correct truth Marashi does say is the Iranian regime’s efforts to shift the onus of any deal onto the U.S. and away from Iran. Iran’s lobbying machine has ramped to a fever pitch in advance of the March 24th deadline to find any excuse other than the Iranian regime’s extremist views as a reason talks may fail for yet a third time.

The real truth of Iran’s united front is that it is a front united solidly behind the effort to preserve the regime’s ability to build a nuclear weapon.

By Michael Tomlinson

Separate reports from various media outlets indicate the U.S. has put forward a significant concession towards the Iranian regime in the third round of nuclear talks between the Islamic state and the P5+1 group of nations seeking to halt its development of nuclear weapons.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal this morning, “the U.S. and Iran are exploring a nuclear deal that would keep Tehran from amassing enough material to make a bomb for at least a decade, but could then allow it to gradually build up its capabilities again.

“Such a deal would represent a significant compromise by the U.S., which had sought to restrain Tehran’s nuclear activities for as long as 20 years. Tehran has insisted on no more than a 10-year freeze.”

The concession is monumental for several reasons.

One, it continues the trend of the West caving in to Iran’s mullahs without gaining any significant concessions from them in return. There are no concessions for Iran’s religious leadership to move towards a democratic, secular society. No assurances on the release of thousands of imprisoned political and religious prisoners. No indication even of any let up in the regime’s support for the global increase in terrorism and extremist groups.

Second, it does not prevent the regime from eventually building a nuclear device anyway. It merely reduces the originally hoped-for period for supervising Iran’s nuclear program from 20 years to now only a decade. It is even more astonishing considering the recent revelations from the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran has still avoided and stonewalled disclosing details of the military aspects of its nuclear program.

How does anyone expect Iran to undergo a decade of supervision of its nuclear program when it has already successfully evaded international inspection of its military facilities for the past 12 years? Let alone the reports about the continuation of the clandestine activities and its missile program, that can be used to carry nuclear warheads to Europe and Middle East.

The proposal to shrink the window and allow mullahs in Iran the ability to ramp up its enrichment capacity does nothing for improving peace prospects globally as the regime’s lobbying allies such as the National Iranian American Council would have us believe. If anything, the accelerated push towards the ability to construct and deploy nuclear devices is most likely to cause another arms race amongst Iran’s anxious neighbors.

We can only imagine how regime loyalists such as Trita Parsi, Ryan Costello and Tyler Cullis will crow about this development and call it “peace in our time.”

It will also force a confrontation whereby Iran’s mullahs will seek to flex its newfound political muscle by using its leverage in the proxy war against ISIS as it continues to deepen its control over its neighbors in Syria, Iraq and Yemen and be buoyed financially by the lifting of economic sanctions of the flood of billions in petrodollars into its coffers.

The most absurd part of this entire process has been the perception among diplomats and analysts, which is the appearance that the U.S. has been essentially negotiating against itself in giving concession after concession without gaining anything meaningful from the mullahs in return. As Iran’s inscrutable mullahs sit through three years of talks and publicly have denounced America and its policies and the potential of any deal, the U.S. has slowly chipped away at its own position in an effort to entice Iran’s mullahs into agreeing to a deal…any deal.

In sports, it is akin to a team trying to lure a desirable free agent and still bidding higher even as every other team has walked away from the table.

In this specific moment of time, negotiators seemed to have adopted the mantra that “there is no such thing as a bad deal.”

All of which portends significant trouble on Capitol Hill where both Republicans and Democratic Senators have made plain their opposition to any agreement that gives the Iranian regime the ability to develop and possess nuclear weapons period; not just extend the time and inconvenience it takes the regime to develop those weapons.

The right approach will be for the Senate to develop a more skeptical line to any proposed deal.

By Michael Tomlinson