First some facts and baseline suppositions:
- Iran has the world's second largest proven natural gas reserves after Russia.
- Iran and the EU together seemed willing to work together to keep the framework for the old nuclear deal intact after Trump pulled out so hopefully there is some good will there.
- With Russia's invasion of Ukraine, an order is changing and some states are considering actions previously hard to imagine e.g. Finland joining NATO
- The United States-Israel / Iran relationship needs to go somewhere positive
- Saudi Arabia is not critical to the United States in the century to come, particularly given expected transitions in energy production
Given the above, I would posit that there's never been a better time to do a Great Reset on the relationship between the West and Iran. Restore the nuclear deal, start a series of confidence building measures, engage Iran to meet EU natural gas needs. This has numerous other tails and potential windfalls:
- The opportunity to bring Iran into closer orbit with the west in this century's coming competition with China.
- Iran and India have extremely friendly relations these days, even having signed a mutual defense pact, and this brings India's 1.4 billion people into closer orbit with the West as well
- It's an opportunity to heal a rift that's stupid and counterproductive
In times of change, smart decision makers will consider that the ground rules have changed and what seemed insane before might now make a lot of sense. In this vein, I would propose that now's the time to pounce on positive engagement with Iran.
Counter-point to my own argument: Iran may already have been lost to China, in which case sanctions by the West will have the same long term effect that they are having against Russia e.g. not enough to meaningful change anything: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–China_25-year_Cooperation_Program