Iran is not anti-imperialist. It is a state calculating survival

Associate professor of philosophy at Northeastern University London.

More than five months into the US-Israel war on Iran, the prospects for a deal that would end the confrontation remain unclear. Earlier this week, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said there were no direct negotiations with the United States.

Meanwhile, hostile rhetoric and calls for revenge continue to emanate from Tehran. Some Western commentators, especially on the right, have claimed that Iran is incapable of striking a deal because of its anti-American ideology. But that is a flawed assumption.

One just needs to look at the Iranian constitution and its recent history to discover that the Islamic Republic is not governed solely by ideology. The regime, in its present form, would not shy away from reaching a settlement with the US and even Israel, if it fell in line with its guiding principle: regime survival.

In January 1988, Iranian Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini settled an internal dispute over the scope of velayat-e faqih, the guardianship of the Islamic jurist, by declaring that the Islamic government ranks above all other rulings of Islam, including prayer, fasting and pilgrimage. The following month, he ordered the creation of a body to resolve deadlocks between the parliament and the Guardian Council by determining what was in the interest of the governing system.

The revisions to the constitution in 1989 gave it a permanent place as Article 112 : the Council for Discerning the Expediency of the System.

The message was explicit. Preservation of the system — hefz-e nezam — was the highest religious obligation, and an organ was established to license departures from religious law whenever the system required them.

In the following years, this principle was clearly applied in how the Islamic Republic deployed official ideology, including its hostility towards Washington and Tel Aviv.