Iran International
Mohammad Javad Zarif’s latest Foreign Affairs article follows a familiar pattern in his narrative: recasting Tehran’s militarization and domestic repression as reactive responses to external pressure rather than deliberate internal choices.
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.
Pharmaceutical sector representatives say the flow has accelerated after Pakistan curtailed drug exports to Afghanistan, turning Iran’s subsidized market into an attractive source for traffickers.
They argue that wide price gaps between Iran and neighboring countries have made smuggling structurally profitable, sidelining legal export channels.
Drug production has increased by around 50% but shortages persist, Mohsen Abdollahzadeh, a board member of the Drug Distributors Syndicate said on Tuesday.
“Drug smuggling from Iran to Iraq and Afghanistan is so extensive that traders in those countries are unable to import medicines legally and cannot compete with smuggled Iranian drugs,” he added.
Food and Drug Administration of Iran has conceded that so-called “reverse smuggling” exists, driven by sharp price differences with neighboring markets.
However, spokesperson Mohammad Hashemi disputed a widespread surge, saying documented cases remain limited. Continued leakage, he warned, could trigger intermittent shortages and place further strain on an already fragile supply chain.
Recent talks with an Afghan delegation, Hashemi said, focused on expanding formal pharmaceutical exports and improving monitoring, a move critics say reflects belated damage control rather than a solution to entrenched enforcement gaps.
Food market shows same fault lines
The controversy mirrors developments in food markets, where currency policy shifts and the removal of subsidized exchange rates have driven sharp increases in staple prices.
Analysts say both sectors show the same pattern: multiple pricing regimes and weak oversight have encouraged arbitrage and cross-border leakage.
For consumers, the result has been recurrent shortages and rising costs, as subsidized goods – whether medicine or food – slip out of regulated channels faster than authorities can contain them.
Authorities say medicines are still available for now, but concede that delays in transferring allocated foreign exchange, mounting arrears to suppliers and dwindling inventories have pushed the sector to the brink, increasing the risk of shortages in the final months of the Iranian year, which ends on March 20.
In an economy battered by chronic inflation and currency volatility, officials say, keeping drug prices frozen shifts the burden onto manufacturers and ultimately jeopardizes national drug supply chain.