As President Trump and regional diplomats began to herald the possibility of a deal with Iran that could end the war, the spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry responded with his version of a history lesson.<\/p>\n
Esmail Baghaei, the spokesman, posted an image on social media of a famous relief carved into an archaeological site in Iran that portrays a Roman emperor bowing in submission to a king of the Sassanians, an ancient Iranian empire.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the Roman mind, Rome was the undisputed center of the world,\u201d Mr. Baghaei wrote,<\/a> in an apparent reference to the political and military might of Washington today. \u201cThe Iranians shattered that illusion.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite the military and economic battering Iran has endured during its war with the United States and Israel, its leaders are casting the reported terms of a possible preliminary agreement with Washington as a victory.<\/p>\n On Sunday, a senior U.S. official said that the United States and Iran had agreed to a preliminary deal that would fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz and see Iran dispose of its stock of highly enriched uranium. The official, who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to speak publicly, cautioned that a deal had not been signed and would have to be approved by Mr. Trump and Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran\u2019s supreme leader.<\/p>\n Many of the most intractable problems between the countries, including the future of Iran\u2019s nuclear program, were put off to future negotiations. Iran\u2019s leaders and official state media have not publicly commented on Sunday on what is in the potential agreement or what specific issues are under discussion.<\/p>\n How well Iran has fared through the negotiations can only be determined once the terms are known. But regional experts say the country will have a good chance of portraying the results as a win. Two months ago, Mr. Trump had vowed there would be no deal with Iran except \u201cunconditional surrender.\u201d<\/a> Instead, Washington looks as if it has been forced to accept Iran\u2019s oft-repeated position that the only way to end this standoff is through negotiation, not war.<\/p>\n \u201cFor their domestic and regional base, they proved themselves the underdog, capable of taking on two nuclear-armed powers,\u201d said Ellie Geranmayeh, an analyst and the author of the European Council of Foreign Relations\u2019 Iran Nuclear Monitor<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are now coming out with a stronger geopolitical hand than before given their dominance in the Strait of Hormuz. They also demonstrated that Trump\u2019s nuclear dilemma with Iran won\u2019t be resolved through military might.\u201d<\/p>\n By comparison, the biggest American and Israeli ambitions against Iran seem to have been frustrated. The killing of Iran\u2019s supreme leader and top military commanders has not toppled the country\u2019s autocratic system of clerical rule.<\/p>\n Any terms for curbing Iran\u2019s ballistic missiles<\/a> or its regional network of allied militias, according to what has been reported about the preliminary agreement, do not appear to be included.<\/p>\n And it remains unclear what commitments<\/a> Iran would have, and under what time frame, to suspend its nuclear program or remove its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which could be turned into a nuclear weapon.<\/p>\n Discussion about those commitments may be pushed into a second phase of negotiations.<\/p>\n Claiming victory is in some ways easier for Iran than for the U.S. because \u201cthe definitions of victory are so lopsided,\u201d said Mohammad Ali Shabani, an Iran analyst and editor of the regional news website, Amwaj.media.<\/p>\n But when it comes to projecting strategic deterrence, he said, Iran does have reasons for renewed confidence.<\/p>\n For years, Iran\u2019s previous supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the opening salvos of the U.S.-Israeli attack, had become cautious in confronting Washington, Mr. Shabani said.<\/p>\n In the current war, Iran\u2019s new leaders showed a willingness to take an aggressive approach that Ayatollah Khamenei had seemed reluctant to take. Iran closed the strait, even though it meant Iran\u2019s vessels were also blocked, and it bombarded its neighbors, the Gulf Arab states that are key regional U.S. allies but with whom Tehran had previously sought to foster closer ties.<\/p>\n Iran\u2019s new leaders \u2014 among them the deceased supreme leader\u2019s own son and successor, Mojtaba, \u201chave done away with that predictable nature,\u201d Mr. Shabani said.<\/p>\n Instead, they have shown that \u201cyou can enter a war with the United States and you will not be completely eliminated. In fact, you could resist. You can resist and impose so much damage on the world economy, so much disruption, that you can compel them to make a deal with you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n None of this negates the serious challenges that Iran faces.<\/p>\n The country is in the throes of a devastating economic crisis<\/a>. Critical industries with both military and civilian uses have been badly bombarded \u2014 from steel factories<\/a> to petrochemical plants<\/a>.<\/p>\n If the negotiations offer Iran either temporary sanctions waivers to sell its oil, or an unfreezing of some of its economic assets abroad, Iranian leaders can sell that domestically as another significant win, said Farzan Sabet, an analyst of Iran and weapons systems at the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland.<\/p>\n Yet, perhaps most important for Iran\u2019s leaders, Tehran will apparently retain its newfound ability to close the Strait of Hormuz through the threat of renewed drone or rocket attacks on shipping, he added.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the short to medium term, that\u2019s the sort of deterrence they\u2019re going to be able to maintain,\u201d Mr. Sabet said.<\/p>\n