With the economy on the brink of collapse and the regime's legitimacy in question, Iranian leadership has come to the conclusion that nuclear talks with the U.S. is the only way to guarantee its political survival in the immediate run, Reuters reported on Thursday citing insider sources.
While Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared victory at the end of the 12-day war with Israel earlier this summer, the Islamic Republic's military vulnerabilities were exposed for all to see, with Israeli war planes enjoying unchallenged superiority in the skies of Iran. The strikes on Iranian nuclear and military targets, which included killings of top Revolutionary Guard commanders and nuclear scientists, punctured the image of deterrence maintained by the mullah regime.
Reuters cited three Iranian insiders as saying the political establishment now views negotiations with the U.S.—aimed at resolving a decades-long dispute over its nuclear ambitions—as the only way to avoid further escalation and stave off existential peril. One source said the leadership now leaned towards talks as "they’ve seen the cost of military confrontation."
The report also cites a senior Western diplomat as saying Iran’s rulers were vulnerable as never before, and defiance of the U.S. administration of President Donald Trump represented a gamble liable to backfire at a time of rising domestic unrest, impaired deterrence power and Israel's disabling of Iran's terror proxies. (Source)