For too long, Americans have looked at Iran’s nuclear program as primarily a military question. Separately, they look at political trends, wondering where the regime is headed. That misses the point. The nuclear program is the crown jewel of Iran’s foreign policy, which itself is an outgrowth of domestic trends. For the past two decades, the state has compensated for losing its ideological footing at home by becoming more extreme in its foreign policy. Today, it finds itself at a critical point: With recent foreign policy setbacks having put it on the back foot abroad, a very secular polity, and…
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Shay Khatiri is a Senior Fellow at Yorktown Institute.
