Mohammad Javad Zarif, the former Iranian Foreign Minister, wrote an article in Foreign Affairs in which he sought to present himself as a patriotic Iranian, loyal to the current regime and intent on saving his country from the war targeting it. He opens the article by asserting that “Iran is winning the war.” Zarif then turns to the “resilience” of the Iranian people, setting the stage for proposing specific suggestions to bring the war to an end.

The former Iranian foreign minister, who negotiated the nuclear file with his American counterpart John Kerry, does not appear to recognize that the current American administration is different, and that any agreement with it seems unlikely in the absence of the war’s broader dimensions. Chief among these is that Iran’s problem is with the world—particularly neighboring countries that have been subjected to repeated attacks by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Most importantly, Zarif seems to completely overlook Iran’s ballistic missiles and their launch platforms, as well as its regional arms, which are directly affiliated with the “Revolutionary Guard.”

The answer is that the “Islamic Republic” regime is of a kind whose expiration date has passed. The regime’s time has run out, along with that of the American nuclear file, which must be concluded without any conditions. This is something Mohammad Javad Zarif and others refuse to grasp, owing to a mindset rooted in the era of Barack Obama.

Late last year, at a conference held in Doha, Mohammad Javad Zarif criticized the groups that Iran had supported. He did so on the grounds that these groups, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, for example, had done nothing to support the “Islamic Republic.”

Naturally, Mohammad Javad Zarif can be asked where the Palestinian cause stands in light of Iran’s support for it. Where does Lebanon stand after Iranian efforts that turned Hezbollah into the state itself, reducing the Lebanese state to a mini-state within the party’s structure? Where does Lebanon stand after Iran came to control the country’s decisions of war and peace and opened the southern front under the pretext of “supporting Gaza”? And where do Lebanese Shiites stand in light of the desire for revenge following the assassination of Ali Khamenei?

Certainly, the results of Iranian policy based on the use of proxies—such as Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, or Iraqi militias operating under the banner of the Popular Mobilization Forces—have become clear. These tools have fulfilled their intended role in fragmenting the social fabric in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq.