It was the sort of propaganda that would make Goebbels blush. The streets of Tehran erupted in choreographed jubilation, state television broadcasting endless loops of chador-clad women waving flags, bearded men firing Kalashnikovs into the air. ‘Victory’, they called it.
But scratch that smoky lens and you find a very different picture: a people who saw the US deal not as a triumph, but as a tourniquet. The sanctions had bitten deep. The rial had lost more than 80 per cent of its value.
Grandmothers were selling their jewellery for bread. And the mullahs, those masters of the managed image, had no choice but to pretend that a nuclear deal they once called ‘poison’ was actually manna from heaven. This is the old story of decadent regimes spinning necessity as choice, a tale as old as the Roman Senate’s desperate attempts to dress up Gothic tribute payments as diplomatic gifts.
The Iranians know the truth: their leaders blinked. And when a regime blinks, its subjects are not deceived, they simply learn the art of silent contempt. What we are witnessing is not the birth of a new era of moderation, but the last gasp of a sclerotic theocracy that has mistaken its own survival for victory.
