Delusion of finding Iran mullahs becoming liberals and moderates is long dead

Rest assured that nothing will come out of these talks

Some western leaders are trying to induce this perception that mullahs ruling Iran, be it the so called ’hardliners’ or supposedly ’moderates’!!, will eventually have to change their mind-set and adopt a civilized and democratic approach to both domestic and international issues. What a delusion!
The argument that the advocates of Obama nuclear deal with the mullahs invest on is that the deal will have positive effects on Iran’s politics; that Iran’s rulers will become more moderate and democratic in 10 or 15 year as a result; therefore, one should not be too concerned about Iran’s nuclear capabilities then.
The argument asserts that the deal reduces threats to the fundamentalist rulers, which in turn will result in a reduction of repression.  The removal of sanctions and the reduction of repression will allow the middle class to grow and thus strengthen pro-democracy forces and human rights activists.  These forces will compel the fundamentalist rulers to moderate their behavior in domestic and foreign realms.
The above argument ignores the history, logic, and nature of the Shia fundamentalist oligarchy that rules Iran.  The Iran-Iraq war provides an excellent precedent to analyze the nuclear conflict.  The same arguments were made in 1988 that with the end of the war, the regime would reduce repression, allow democratization, and integrate into the international community as a responsible actor.  In actual reality, however, the reverse became true.  During the war, the regime had held large numbers of political prisoners.  In late August 1988, a few weeks after the end of the war, the regime mass executed about 4,000 political prisoners who were supporters of the PMOI, many of whom had been arrested as teenagers whose sole crime was distributing leaflets of the group, and the revolutionary courts had given them prison sentences.  And in September the regime mass executed about 1,000 Marxist political prisoners, who had been merely jailed and tortured before the end of the war.  The prisoners were asked whether they regarded the Koran as the word of God.  Those who refused to answer or replied in the negative were executed as apostates.  Then in February 1989, Khomeini issued his death fatwa against Salman Rushdie for apostasy. The Rushdie controversy arose in early 1988, and Khomeini had remained silent throughout the war while there were numerous protests in the Islamic world causing many deaths.  Khomeini’s attack on Rushdie occurred not during the war but after the war ended.  Even more significant, whereas the regime tolerated many moderate political figures during the war, the regime launched a massive campaign of assassinations and repression of these respected figures in what became known as the “Chain Murders.”  For example, Dr. Kazem Sami, a well-respected liberal Islamist, who had served as Minister of Health in the Provisional government was murdered on November 23, 1988.  One of the leaders of the Iran National Front, Dr. Shamsaldin Amir-Alaee -- who had served in Mossadegh’s cabinet in the 1951-53 period as Minister of Interior -- was murdered in 1994.  The National Front’s top leader, Dr. Ali Ardalan, was so severely tortured that he suffered two heart attacks under torture. 
The reason that the regime increased repression after the war was that it feared that the people who had endured hardships during the war would demand freedom.  If the regime reduced repression, then the pro-democracy forces would have utilized the opening to demand democracy.  Therefore, the logic of survival demanded that the regime increase repression.more