It appears that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Iranian leadership are headed towards tactical dialogue with the West, with the aim of accomplishing the regime's strategic goals. These goals include: a) improving Iran's economy by getting the Western sanctions lifted and advancing massive investment in the Iranian economy; b) upgrading Iran's status (to that of a nuclear-armed state); and c) obtaining international recognition for Iran's resistance axis (see MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis No. 1848, In Advance Of Revival Of U.S.-Iran Nuclear Talks, Iranian Calls For Iran To Possess Nuclear Weapons Are Again Heard, September 5, 2024).

To this end, Khamenei seems to be returning to the tactical format of political flexibility with regard to Iran's relationship with the United States – the “Great Satan.” Khamenei has referred to this as “heroic flexibility." This was his motto, and his essential approval for, Iran's nuclear negotiations a decade ago with the U.S. for the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal. The aim of this flexibility is to achieve political and economic goals that the regime needs and that only the U.S. can provide – particularly if the U.S. brings Europe into this as well.

Thus, the "Great Satan" is, ironically, the only one capable of making it possible for the Iranian regime to achieve its long-term goals, via negotiations and diplomacy, without Iran having to relinquish its ideological enmity to the U.S. or to back down from any of its positions. Thus, Iran is in fact recycling, in an upgraded and more sophisticated form, the approach it used to achieve the political and military gains embodied in the JCPOA. That achievement began with then-U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2011 handwritten recognition of Iran’s right in principle to enrich uranium on its own soil, two years prior to the beginning of the public JCPOA negotiations (see MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 6131, Iranian Senior Officials Disclose Confidential Details From Nuclear Negotiations: Already In 2011 We Received Letter From U.S. Administration Recognizing Iran's Right To Enrich Uranium, August 10, 2015 and Special Dispatch No. 6134, Iranian VP And Atomic Chief Salehi Reveals Details From Secret Iran-U.S. Nuclear Talks: Khamenei Made Direct Talks Conditional Upon Achieving Immediate Results; U.S. Conveyed Its Recognition Of Iran's Enrichment Rights To Omani Sultan, Who Relayed The Message To Then-President Ahmadinejad, August 16, 2015.)

At this time, as the October 2025 sunsetting of the official framework for the JCPOA agreement draws near (the conditions of which Iran has not met since 2019, one year after President Trump announced the U.S.'s withdrawal from it), and in advance of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is preparing to achieve another agreement outline with the U.S. that will boost Iran's nuclear, economic, and regional and military status amid the tangled international developments of the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza.