Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami has written an interesting op-ed that helps explain why Iran isn’t going to give in to Trump’s demands:

Despite the pressure coming from some of his advisers, President Trump still has the choice to reverse his administration’s unnecessary escalation. He should be aware that Iranians are steadfast. For well over a century since our 1905 constitutional revolution, Iranians have fought to preserve our dignity and independence. The JCPOA negotiating process was proof of Iran’s good faith and commitment to a respectful international peace. The question is whether the current US administration is willing to respond in kind, instead of continuing to issue insults and threats and using the kind of colonial language more befitting of 19th-century imperial administrators than a 21st-century world power [bold mine-DL].

Khatami’s review of how the U.S. and Iran have reached the current impasse is helpful in telling us how Iranians, or at least Iranian political elites, understand what has happened in the last few years. They see Trump’s bad faith and maximalist demands through the lens of their country’s experience with hostile foreign governments. They see the relentless economic war that the U.S. is waging against them as part of a pattern of threats and attacks on their country by external powers. Iran’s government considers giving in to the administration’s demands as nothing less than national humiliation. Insofar as they see themselves as protecting Iranian independence and sovereignty, they believe they can’t make these concessions without compromising both.

On at least some of the disputed issues (e.g., the nuclear program, missiles, etc.), there is also broad popular support for the government’s position. Yielding to U.S. pressure on these issues would be political suicide for any leader. Zarif recently characterized Pompeo’s preposterous demands as effectively calling for “national annihilation.” Even if we grant that this is exaggeration for effect, it is clear that the Iranian government sees these demands as completely unacceptable and won’t even consider them. Whether we agree with this view or not, it is important to understand that this is the view informing the response to U.S. sanctions and threats. This is why “maximum pressure” isn’t “working” to extract concessions from Iran, and it is why it can’t “work.” No government is going to agree to its own humiliation if it has anything to say about it.

Trump’s foreign policy has a great many flaws, but one of the most important weaknesses is the president’s inability or unwillingness to see things from another nation’s perspective. This is not unique to Trump, of course, but it is more noticeable because he and his officials talk about national sovereignty and nationalism so often. It is curious that self-described nationalists are usually the worst at understanding the nationalism of others, but then one of the major problems with nationalism is the tendency to denigrate and belittle other nations. Nationalists should know better than anyone that other nationalists would reject arrogant demands for surrender, but it is nationalism that encourages them in their arrogant presumption that everyone else should submit to what “we” want. A president with a basic understanding of how other nations see the world would realize that a country with a strong tradition of anti-colonialist nationalist resistance isn’t going to knuckle under when presented with sweeping demands from a superpower. Unfortunately, Trump doesn’t have that understanding, and his own nationalist attitudes make him unwilling to acknowledge that his policy towards Iran is cruel and unjust.