Was Iran Ever Allowed To Be A Normal Country?

Iran’s tragedy is not that it is evil but that it was never allowed to be ordinary.

Like many have done, it is tempting to prescribe a realistic and pragmatic path for Iran out of its chronic economic and diplomatic crisis.

One could reel out obvious things that the country needs to do: negotiate nuclear restraints in exchange for sanction relief, revive oil exports and access to global finance; scale back proxy commitments, freeing billions for domestic needs and reducing vulnerability to retaliation; pursue détente with Gulf states and cautious engagement with the West, turning rivals into trading partners; launch serious economic diversification, reforming subsidies and attracting investment to build resilience beyond oil…

Just be a sensible and normal country like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Jordan.

But what if one decides to answer another question: Has the Islamic Republic been given a chance to be rational and normal? Even at the risk of denying Iran’s agency, I think it’s worth answering, if only to problematise a received narrative.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is today widely regarded in Western discourse as a uniquely malignant regime — corrupt, aggressive, ideologically deranged, and perpetually at war with both its own people and its neighbours.

In a sense, this portrait is not necessarily false. But it is dangerously incomplete. It mistakes symptoms for causes.

It confuses pathology with origin. And in doing so, it blinds us to the tragic structure that has governed Iran’s fate for nearly half a century.

Iran’s true tragedy is not that it became radical. It is that it was never allowed to become normal.

Modern history shows that revolutionary states, once they overthrow a foreign-backed order, face a decisive fork.

Either they are gradually absorbed into the international system, or they are sealed off, pressured, and encircled until their revolution curdles into permanent siege.

China and Vietnam were ultimately integrated. Cuba, North Korea — and Iran — were not. The difference was not morality. It was geopolitics.

From the moment the Shah fell in 1979, Iran entered a world that had no intention of letting the revolution breathe.

The hostage crisis of 1979–1981 stands as the original sin in US-Iran relations, a humiliating episode that has never been forgiven and continues to poison diplomacy.

Iranian militants’ seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran, holding 52 Americans captive for 444 days, was a direct response to decades of perceived US meddling, including the 1953 CIA-orchestrated coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and unwavering support for the authoritarian Shah.

The crisis not only toppled President Jimmy Carter’s re-election bid but embedded a narrative of Iranian treachery in American consciousness.

The Algiers Accords ended the standoff then, but they did not restore relations.

There was no forgiveness, no normalization, no pathway back into the global order.

What followed was not diplomacy but permanent probation.

Its assets were frozen. Its diplomats expelled. Its government branded illegitimate.

Then, within a year, it was invaded by Saddam Hussein — an unprovoked invasion quietly welcomed and materially supported by the United States, Europe, and the Gulf monarchies.

The eight-year war that followed killed or wounded more than a million Iranians and destroyed a generation of economic possibility.

No modern state emerges from such trauma psychologically intact.

In this climate, Iran did what every besieged state does: it securitized. Power flowed not to technocrats or reformers but to those who could defend the regime — the Revolutionary Guards, the intelligence services, the clerical hardliners.

Sanctions did not moderate Iran. They taught it that survival depended on secrecy, smuggling, and militarization.

The middle class withered. The black market flourished. Ideology became a shield for privilege.

Even Iran’s much-condemned network of regional proxies can be understood in this light. A state denied normal military deterrence will seek abnormal ones.

Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iraqi militias are not religious crusades.

They are Iran’s asymmetric shield against adversaries who possess air forces, nuclear weapons, and American security guarantees.

They are not necessarily moral — but they are rational.

The one moment this tragic cycle seemed to break was the nuclear agreement of 2015.

For a brief time, Iran was allowed to trade, invest, and grow. Its economy began to recover. Its politics started softening.

And then the agreement was unilaterally torn up. The lesson Iranians learned was devastating: no matter what we concede, we will never be accepted.

Later, when it was deep in nuclear negotiations, lulled into a sense that its counterparts were sincere, its officials were assassinated, and the process was scuttled, and a very brief war ensued.

The revolutionary Republic has always been diplomatically besieged. This is how revolutions die — not in flames, but in fortresses.

None of this absolves Iran’s rulers. Many of them have stolen from their people, crushed dissent, subordinated women, and wrapped corruption in piety.

But their sins were fertilized by a world that never permitted ordinary statehood. Siege became both their excuse and their instrument.

Reinhold Niebuhr warned that when nations are denied dignity, they seek power; when they are denied security, they seek dominance; and when they are denied a place in the world, they become dangerous to it.

Iran today appears dangerous not because it was uniquely wicked, but because it was never allowed to be merely another country.

The question I ask myself is this: At what point could it have been easy for Iran to adopt a realistic and pragmatic path in this concatenation of relentless external pressures — military, economic, and diplomatic — that have only exacerbated its flaws and entrenched its defiance?

The choice before the powerful West remains tragic but clear.

The US and its friends can continue the politics of permanent punishment and harvest only defiance.

Or they can finally attempt the harder, riskier work of allowing Iran to become ordinary — and therefore reformable.

History suggests that only the latter has the chance to work.

(It takes two to tango. This message is for the West. As for Iran’s leadership, they can still try to be more pragmatic, less defiant abroad and less oppressive and rigid at home.)