Iranians are going to the polls on Friday:

The world is watching to see if the reformist camp will gain ground, but expectations aren’t high.

…[T]he nuclear agreement Iran and world powers completed last year…[is unlikely to] produce significant internal change in the Islamic Republic. Indeed, for the foreseeable future, that accord may have the opposite effect.

Here’s why: America may have gotten what it needed with the nuclear accord, but Iran got what it wanted ”” an accord that would consolidate the government’s power, not undermine it…

…Iran got access to billions of dollars in frozen assets, the prospect of billions more in trade deals with Europe and Asia, and the capacity to develop nukes down the road if it wants to. An improved economy co-opts pressure for change in Iran, even though it is the elites, not the broader public, that will be the primary beneficiaries. In all, the nuclear deal has created the perception and reality that Iran has come in from the cold.

None of this favors Iran’s pragmatists and centrists, let alone its reformers. In fact, as Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group notes, in Iran historically “external loosening” is balanced with “internal stiffening.”

A lot of people who supported Obama’s Iranian deal used the argument that it would foster reform in Iran. I never believed it, but the people I know who did felt that it would happen over a very long period of time, perhaps decades.

Well, if that actually were to happen, it probably would have happened faster without it. Iran so far has resisted reform successfully for over 35 years, and I see no end in sight.