Iran is waiting for a President Harris

Fear of U.S. military power has always been the primary brake on the clerical regime. That fear has been fading where it matters most: Tehran’s nuclear program has rapidly advanced in the past four years. Iran’s proxies, when not ignored, have been ineffectually countered—Yemen’s Houthis so far have the upper hand in their conflict with the U.S. Navy in the Red Sea. With relatively crude Iranian-supplied missiles, the Houthis continue to curtail shipping through the Suez Canal despite American and European efforts to protect the sea lane. And a Kamala Harris presidency would surely compound the errors of her predecessor.

The Democratic Party’s approach to Tehran is now inextricably and counterproductively tied to U.S. policy toward Israel: Washington tries to limit Israeli military action against Hezbollah, the Islamic Republic’s most feared offshoot, and stamp out any possibility that Jerusalem will launch a military assault against Iran’s nuclear sites. This mindset flows from a deep fear of a U.S.-Iran confrontation and a guess by many in Washington that Mr. Khamenei hasn’t yet decided to build a bomb. The best course of action, therefore, is to maintain the status quo, which the cleric finds acceptable.

That guess is wrong: The Islamic Republic now gains far more than it loses by going nuclear. Indeed, Mr. Khamenei made a mistake by not developing a bomb sooner. The increasing conversation in Tehran about how easy and useful it would be to develop a nuclear weapon is surely a byproduct of the clerical regime’s realization that Israel has significant tactical and intelligence advantages—many of Iran’s senior officials may be within Mossad’s reach—and America’s conventional capacity remains pulverizing. At a minimum, an Iranian bomb would check Israeli and American aggression in the Persian heartland.

When the Islamic Republic gets the bomb, as it eventually will unless military intervention or regime collapse derails the program, war between Israel and Hezbollah will become a high-wire act for Jerusalem. Israeli attacks on Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders and installations in the Levant will become dicey if Tehran threatens to extend its nuclear umbrella. America’s freedom to move against the clerical regime—Iran has repeatedly killed U.S. servicemen with no American reprisals in a conventional age—will shrink further.

Democrats and the American left have achieved what Iranian revolutionaries once would have dismissed as impossible: Tehran sees exploitable divisions between America and Israel. Demonstrations against the Gaza war, rising anti-Israel sentiments within the Democratic Party, and overtly antisemitic language in elite American circles have muddled the traditional Iranian take on America—that Democrats and Republicans are both hopeless Zionist stooges. The opening that Barack Obama made with his nuclear concessions, which Mr. Khamenei explored and exploited, has become Democratic Party orthodoxy: Engagement with the theocracy is in itself a good thing.

This is surely the reason behind the supreme leader’s apparent willingness to restart nuclear negotiations with Washington. He wants to explore whether Mr. Biden and, more importantly, Ms. Harris can be neutralized through diplomacy. Mr. Khamenei’s enmity for America doesn’t “mean that we cannot interact with the same enemy in certain situations."

The Islamic Republic’s diplomats are accustomed to dealing with Democrats. They negotiated a nuclear agreement with them and still engage them at various international forums. Ms. Harris spent the Trump years denigrating the “maximum pressure" campaign. She condemned Donald Trump’s decision to kill Qasem Soleimani, the Revolutionary Guard dark lord who was the father of the “ring of fire" strategy against Israel. Like the Soviets in the 1970s, who preferred realist, establishment Republicans, Iran’s ruling elite see Democrats as more predictable.

Mr. Khamenei and his diplomats are waiting for a President Harris. Given that Democrats believe there is no tolerable alternative to the Iran nuclear dilemma other than diplomacy, they probably won’t leave the table no matter how Iran transgresses. Mr. Obama watched Iran, Russia and their Syrian allies slaughter tens of thousands of Syrian civilians while pushing the nuclear talks forward. Iran thinks it can count on Democrats to restrain the Israelis.

The Islamic Republic has exploited its proxy-war strategy brilliantly. But its success has also highlighted the theocracy’s weaknesses. A nuke would allow the Islamic Republic to stay on the offensive in the Middle East with fewer concerns about blowback. In practice, the doctrine of mutually assured destruction would work against Israel, allowing the Iranian theocracy more maneuvering room.

The mullahs are now so close to obtaining a nuke—given what we can see in the Iranian nuclear-weapons archives stolen by the Mossad—that it’s unlikely any serious technical hurdle remains. Neither diplomacy nor sanctions will stop the advance. Ms. Harris probably knows this. The search for peace and regional stability, the oft-heard aspiration of U.S. policy in the Middle East, now means, when translated into Persian, giving Tehran the bomb.

Mr. Gerecht is a resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.