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Editorial

Unrest Shows the Iran Nuclear Deal’s Value, Not Its Danger

Pro-government Iranians demonstrated in Qum, Iran, last week with posters of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Islamic Republic of Iran’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.Credit...Mohammad Ali Marizad/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

For ordinary Iranians, the great promise of the 2015 nuclear deal was economic revival. International sanctions would be lifted, foreign investment would flow and the standard of living, crippled by years of ostracism by the United States and its partners, would rise, allowing Iran to once again flourish.

That hasn’t happened, or at least not the way Iranians expected, thus producing conditions that helped make the recent protests — the most serious since 2009 — possible. Over two weeks, thousands of Iranians in more than 80 cities took to the streets to denounce high unemployment, inflation, corruption and the government’s habit of spending money on foreign wars while cutting programs at home.

As the unrest unfolded, President Trump blamed the 2015 nuclear deal negotiated under President Barack Obama because it required the United States to put millions of dollars back into the hands of a repressive government — money that belonged to Iran but was frozen after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and returned when Iran curbed its nuclear program.

It’s more plausible that by raising expectations for a better life, the deal opened Iranians’ eyes and made them less tolerant when the government fell short.

The deal has had a beneficial effect. The economy grew by 7 percent in 2016 and was expected to do so again in 2017, a far cry from the 9 percent shrinkage in the two years before March 2014, when modest sanctions relief took effect. Oil production is nearly at pre-sanctions levels, foreign companies are making new energy investments and Boeing has received orders for commercial aircraft.

Nevertheless, growth and investment aren’t doing enough to meet the needs of a population mainly too young to remember the Islamic Revolution.

While low oil prices are a big factor in Iran’s failure to rebound, so are corruption, mismanagement, a weak banking system, a failure to curb money laundering, a flawed rule of law and a record of human rights abuses, including arrests of American-Iranian businessmen, that make foreign companies reluctant to do business there. The hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and various religious institutions, which control much of the economy, are major impediments to reform.

Now that some 22 people have been killed and at least 1,000 detained, the anti-government protests may be petering out without a clear indication of whether they will have a lasting impact. They certainly aren’t the end of the struggle among Iranian hard-liners, determined to maintain rigid Islamic laws that dictate how people should live; moderates like President Hassan Rouhani, who advocate social liberalization and engagement with the West; and now, assuming the protesters stay engaged, an angry working class.

On Monday, Mr. Rouhani came to the protesters’ defense, saying they objected not just to a weak economy but also to widespread corruption and the clerical government’s strict policies on personal conduct and freedoms. “One cannot force one’s lifestyle on the future generations,” he said in remarks reported by the semiofficial ISNA news agency.

All this reveals a real struggle for Iran’s soul that requires an approach more sophisticated than Mr. Trump’s, which would exploit the turmoil to justify reneging on the nuclear deal. That would free Iran to resume nuclear activities and enable new sanctions that would shift Iranian rage from Tehran to Washington. Some American officials and analysts want to go further and overthrow Iran’s government.

But Iran’s future is for the Iranians to determine. The United States needs to be humble about what it doesn’t know and cautious about more direct involvement in the country’s politics. America has a troubled history with Iran, including overthrowing the country’s democratically elected leader in 1953. Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Vietnam are haunting reminders of America’s failures at trying to orchestrate political and social change abroad.

The question is not whether but how to help Iranians who favor nonviolent change. The United States, with its Western allies, should, of course, advocate the right of Iranians to seek peaceful political change, condemn the arrests of peaceful protesters and the violence against them, and urge internet companies to make it harder for Iran’s leaders to block social media apps like Telegram that are so crucial to organizing and public debate. If he cares about the Iranian people, as he claims, Mr. Trump will also lift the ban on Iranians traveling to America.

But the president should also be aware that foolish moves by his administration could empower the most regressive forces and set back reforms that could bring Iran fully into the community of nations.

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A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 22 of the New York edition with the headline: Unrest Shows the Iran Deal’s Value. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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