Crisis is always around the corner in the Middle East, and if the nuclear negotiations with Iran go nowhere, tensions will rise again rapidly. This is where the unusual level of inter-Arab dialogue and efforts at cooperation could provide some balance, and a rare win-win for everyone. Except the leaders of Iran.

The short-term crisis between the two neighbors has dissipated. But in the longer term, relations have gotten a lot more complicated. As tensions subsided following weeks of saber-rattling and hostile rhetoric, the foreign ministers of Iran and Azerbaijan had a November 5 phone call in which they blamed “ill-wishers” for trying to exploit “recent misunderstandings between the two neighbors,” as the Iranian readout put it. But the short-term rapprochement and blame-shifting only serves to obscure larger shifts in the relationship: While the war games and insults have abated, diverging geopolitical choices continue to pull Baku and Tehran in opposite directions, augmenting the risks of periodic eruptions in the future.

Fearing a Western-inspired overthrow, Tehran has intensified enforcement of morality laws, purged professors from universities, and poured billions of dollars into the creation of a separate national intranet. To understand Iranian anxieties about Western cultural invasion, one need look no further than Psychological Operations Quarterly, a journal published until recently by the IRGC’s Social-Cultural Directorate. Focusing on the “soft war” waged by various Western entities, the periodical covers such material as supposedly anti-Iranian films (Alexander, The Wrestler, Argo), the relationship between McDonald’s franchises and the fall of the Soviet Union, and the harm done by English-language textbooks to the Iranian mind. Since 1979, in response to such perceived threats, the Islamic Republic has intensified enforcement of morality laws, purged professors from universities, and poured billions of dollars into creating a national intranet separate from the wider internet, among other repressive moves. In this deeply sourced Policy Note, Iran expert Amir Toumaj discusses the many dimensions of Tehran’s paranoia, all of which lead back to fears of a U.S.-spurred “soft overthrow.” Unfortunately, he argues, American leaders will struggle in vain to change the minds of Iran’s ruling hardliners, but they can facilitate longer-term progress by promoting access to diverse viewpoints for the Iranian people.

In his instructions to the new cabinet, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei denounced US President Joe Biden as a “ravenous wolf,” telling his ministers, “Diplomacy should not be influenced and linked to the nuclear issue.” Instead, President Ebrahim Raisi’s team intends to focus on east-oriented economic diplomacy. Both Raisi and Ali Khamenei condemned the previous President Hassan Rouhani for being naive in negotiations with the West, with the Supreme Leader explicitly stating, “Trusting the West doesn’t work.” He considers Western negotiators on the nuclear program unreliable and deceitful. Accordingly, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh demanded that US President Joe Biden provide specific assurances that Washington “will not again renege on its commitments” under the renewed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).