"The fact that you are anti-Semitic, or racist, doesn't preclude you from being interested in survival,” President Obama said last month in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic. “The fact that the supreme leader is anti-Semitic doesn't mean that this overrides all of his other considerations.”
The question of whether Iran, run by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his ayatollahs, is a rational state goes to the very heart of the debate over its nuclear program and the negotiations, now nearing a June 30 deadline, to curb it.
Simply put: Those in the “rational” camp see a regime that wants to remain in power and achieve regional hegemony and will therefore cooperate, rather than languish under international sanctions that threaten to deny it both.