Salon: But while calls from the American far right insist this international peace accord is a mistake, few recognize what this deal truly means for the Islamic Republic of Iran. It isn’t just about economic stability and international security, though those are important. Perhaps most significantly, President Rouhani’s tweet declares that this deal is also about Iran fulfilling its Islamic obligations — obligations that Prophet Muhammad ordered and exemplified in his unrivaled rules of war and negotiation 14 centuries prior.

To be clear, Iran’s domestic human rights record leaves much to be desired. On the international front, however, we see a subtly different picture. Iran has not invaded another country in centuries. This, despite the United States overthrowing Iran’s democratically elected government in 1953, aiding Iraq in invading Iran with the use of chemical weapons on Iranian soldiers in 1980, and maintaining economic sanctions for over a decade.

But this history makes the role that Prophet Muhammad’s rules of war and negotiation play that much more significant.

By 628 A.D., Muslims had suffered for nearly two decades, starting with brutal persecution and boycott in Mecca that forced them to flee to Medina for safety, where they were later forced to defend themselves against yet more attacks. In January of that year Prophet Muhammad and his companions met with Suhayl ibn Amr, leader of the Meccan Army at a place called Hudaybiah. After tense negotiations and only for the sake of peace, Prophet Muhammad agreed to the Treaty of Hudaybiah—a deal wholly lopsided in favor of Meccans. The decade-long truce forbade Muslims from performing the Hajj pilgrimage that year, what we would today recognize as a violation of religious freedom. It forcibly returned to Mecca any Muslim male who had left—a human-rights violation and economic sanction. And it forbade Muslims from carrying arms when visiting Mecca—which left them them virtually defenseless.

More: