However, limiting the economic benefits of the JCPOA would impact the domestic discourse in Iran and radically reconfigure the equation. It would encourage the IRGC and other hard-liners, who have already accused President Rouhani of giving up much of the nuclear program for a few economic benefits—a theme that is expected to dominate the presidential election in 2017.

Farhad Rezaei is a research fellow at Middle East Institute, Sakarya University, Turkey. He is the author of the forthcoming Iran’s Nuclear Program 1979-2015: A Study in Nuclear Proliferation and Rollback (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

Image: IRGC commander-in-chief Mohammad Ali Jafari. Wikimedia Commons/Siamak Ebrahimi