The 1990s in some ways represent a kind of ‘phoney war’ before the real conflict over the Iranian nuclear programme broke out in the early twenty-first century. Washington continued to insist that Iran had a nuclear weapons programme yet regarded it as sufficiently embryonic not to require much attention or extensive reflection as to how it might best be dealt with. Existing policies of diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions were extended despite Washington's failure to persuade the rest of the world to join with it and the consequent ineffectiveness of those policies.

The inertia of US policy was sustained by a combination of a lack of any pressing need to change it – the policy was ineffectual but Iran was still years away from having the bomb – and political considerations that militated against change. As the experience of the first Clinton administration clearly demonstrates, there was a widespread and powerful domestic consensus in favour of taking a hard line with Iran, as well as an Israeli government for which such a hard line was the price of its readiness to negotiate with the Palestinians. In his second term Clinton, encouraged by the election of President Mohammad Khatami, would nevertheless make a tentative effort to engage Iran diplomatically, but that only served to demonstrate that the domestic constraints preventing Iranian leaders from compromising with Washington were as powerful as those in the United States.

Bush and Rafsanjani

Shortly before his death in June 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini approved changes to the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) which eliminated the post of prime minister, enhanced the powers of the president and weakened those of the Majlis. Perhaps most significantly, the changes also removed the need for the Supreme Leader to be a marja, the highest-ranking form of Grand Ayatollah in the Shia clerical hierarchy. In pushing through these changes Khomeini sought to stabilise the regime and ensure its survival after his death. The change to the qualification requirement for Supreme Leader ensured that Khomeini's preferred candidate, Khameini, would succeed him. The newly enhanced presidency was also filled by the candidate Khomeini endorsed before his death, with Rafsanjani winning a landslide vote in July 1989.