Zarif argues that relations between Iran and the United States have long been trapped in a cycle of “securitization,” in which each side responds defensively to the other’s actions.
The Islamic Republic, he writes, has been “forced” to prioritize military spending over development because of attacks by Iraq, Israel, and the United States.
The argument downplays Iran’s own role in shaping that trajectory.
Contrary to Zarif’s account, the theocracy’s turn toward securitization gained pace in the aftermath of the Iran–Iraq war, particularly under the late President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who helped embed the military in politics and the economy as a pillar of postwar reconstruction and state survival.
But Zarif shifts responsibility for Iran’s unbalanced development outward.
Western pressure, not decisions taken by Iran’s leadership, is blamed for a system in which missile programs expanded while welfare sectors such as housing, employment, and healthcare stagnated.
The implication is that Iran’s strategic priorities were imposed rather than chosen.
Zarif further suggests that reduced pressure from Washington would lead Tehran to de-escalate. Yet this claim sits uneasily with his own account of events following the 2015 nuclear deal.
One of the achievements Zarif frequently cited was the lifting of sanctions not only on Iran’s nuclear program but also on arms-related restrictions, including sanctions on Iran Air, allowing the airline to modernize its fleet.
By Zarif’s own account, however, the easing of sanctions did not lead to restraint.
In a 2021 interview with the economist Saeed Leylaz, Zarif acknowledged that Iran Air flights were used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to transfer weapons to Syria, with such flights increasing sharply after the nuclear deal. When Zarif raised concerns with Qassem Soleimani, the then-commander of the Quds Force, he said Soleimani replied that “Iran Air is safer.”
Zarif later described this dynamic as the “dominance of the battlefield over diplomacy,” an admission that key decisions about militarization were made within Iran’s power structure, not imposed from abroad.
Indeed, the period following the nuclear deal saw expanded investment in missile programs and a deepening of Iran’s regional proxy network, financed in part by newly available resources.
Yet in the Foreign Affairs article, Zarif presents increased uranium enrichment and the repression of domestic protest as reactions to Western pressure—once again shifting responsibility for violent crackdowns repression away from the rule in Tehran.
“The external securitization of Iran has fed into a parallel dynamic at home,” he writes, “as the state adopted a stricter approach in dealing with domestic social challenges, responding to these challenges with tighter restrictions.”
A similar pattern appears in Zarif’s account of Iran’s role in Syria.
In the same 2021 interview, he suggested that Iran’s direct military involvement followed a visit by Soleimani to Moscow, framing the escalation as the product of Russian strategy to undermine the nuclear deal rather than a decision taken by Iran’s leadership.
The role of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Iran’s own security institutions is largely absent from this narrative.
The tendency to externalize responsibility extends to other areas as well.
After the nuclear deal, the release of several dual nationals and the unfreezing of Iranian assets raised expectations of de-escalation. Instead, a new wave of arrests of dual nationals followed, a pattern widely seen as deliberate leverage rather than a response to external pressure.
Zarif’s article also describes Israeli strikes in June 2025 as “unprovoked,” without reference to decades of official Iranian rhetoric calling for Israel’s destruction or the expansion of armed proxy groups along Israel’s borders.
The broader context of the current confrontation—including Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, praised by Iranian officials—is notably absent.
Iran has had multiple opportunities to break the cycle Zarif describes, from the early years after the revolution to the post-nuclear-deal period. Each time, its leadership made choices that reinforced militarization and repression rather than curbing them.
The question raised by Zarif’s essay is not whether external pressure mattered—but why internal agency continues to be written out of the story.
