Iran Hawks Rule the Roost

It doesn’t make sense to say that Iran hawks will have “less sway” in an administration that they completely dominate.

The Washington Post published an article yesterday with a headline saying that Iran hawks would have “less sway” in the next Trump administration, and then the article says this:

Trump’s election victory has meant that the GOP’s traditionalist foreign policy hawks — for whom Iran has long been a top focus — are ascendant once again [bold mine-DL], as the party prepares to take control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives.

To Tehran, the message from many of Trump’s surrogates has taken the form of a broad warning. Gone, they say, is the Democrats’ “weak” policy of appeasement. Prepare to be squeezed into submission.

It doesn’t make sense to say that Iran hawks will have “less sway” in an administration that they completely dominate. The nominees for State and Defense are incorrigible, zealous Iran hawks, the National Security Advisor Mike Waltz was already celebrating the “return of maximum pressure” before Trump won, and the vice president-elect made a point of talking about “punching” the Iranians hard shortly after Trump selected him. Trump has been an Iran hawk all along, and he largely defined his Iran policy as a total repudiation of Obama’s diplomatic engagement with their government. During the first Trump administration, there were a few advisers and Cabinet members telling Trump not to tear up the nuclear deal, but this time there will be no one to tell him that “maximum pressure” is a dead end. I don’t know why anyone would think that Iran hawks will have “less clout this time around” when they rule the roost.

Everything we know about the incoming administration’s Iran policy tells us that it is going to be extremely hostile and focused on trying to strangle their government into submission. The Financial Times reported on Trump’s plans on Saturday:

Donald Trump’s new administration will revive its “maximum pressure” policy to “bankrupt” Iran’s ability to fund regional proxies and develop nuclear weapons, according to people familiar with the transition.

Trump’s foreign policy team will seek to ratchet up sanctions on Tehran, including vital oil exports, as soon as the president-elect re-enters the White House in January, people familiar with the transition said.

The “maximum pressure” policy failed before, and it is not going to have more success this time. Because of Trump’s pressure campaign, Iran’s nuclear program expanded as a direct reaction to Trump’s sanctions, U.S.-Iranian tensions skyrocketed, and American troops started coming under attack in Iraq and Syria. Then the U.S. and Iran nearly went to war after the Soleimani assassination. Trump’s decision to renege on the nuclear deal was a colossal blunder, and the U.S. and the entire region have been living with the consequences since then. Thanks to Biden’s foolish continuation of Trump’s bankrupt Iran policy, Trump inherits the results of the mess he made.

Broad sanctions can inflict significant damage on a target economy, but they cannot deliver the results that the sanctionists promise. When hawks say that sanctions “work,” what they mean is that sanctions are destructive and impoverish lots of innocent people, but as far as extracting changes in the targeted state’s policies they are useless and sometimes they cause more of the activities they are meant to stop. When a state has been targeted with broad sanctions as long and as intensely as Iran has, it learns how to adapt and survive under the strains of economic warfare. Trump and his allies imagine that they are going to force Iran to yield this time when their first attempt completely backfired. This is the definition of foreign policy insanity.

While the second Trump administration is even more hawkish than the first, it will have a harder time rallying other governments in the region to its side. There is not as much regional support for intensified economic warfare against Iran as there was six years ago. Iran has reestablished diplomatic relations with several neighbors, including the Saudis, and those neighbors are not as interested in ratcheting up regional tensions as they once were. The wars in Gaza and Lebanon have driven a deep wedge between Israel and Washington’s Arab clients, so it will be more challenging for the U.S. to organize a regional anti-Iran coalition this time around. Even at the height of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign, there was plenty of sanctions-busting going on in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and elsewhere, and there will likely be even more in the future.

When we hear that Trump wants a “deal” with Iran, it is important to bear in mind how far-reaching the Trump administration’s demands were last time. To make a deal that Trump and his allies would find acceptable, Iran would have to make huge concessions that go far beyond the nuclear issue. Trump’s idea of a “better deal” with Iran is that Iran surrenders and gives him everything he asks for. That obviously isn’t going to happen. Besides, the Iranian government has no reason to trust that Trump would honor his side of the bargain even if they were prepared to make such sweeping concessions on other issues. Trump is in a uniquely bad position to negotiate anything with Iran because he has already proven that he will renege on an agreement even when Iran is in full compliance.

Trump and his allies have spent so many years bashing Biden for his supposed weakness and appeasement that they have locked themselves into pursuing a more confrontational policy. They have already all but closed off the path to serious negotiations before they can begin. The Iran hawks that will soon be running Trump’s foreign policy hate the idea of a mutually beneficial compromise with an unfriendly government, and Trump seems to hate the idea of any deal where he has to make any significant concessions.

If Trump were genuinely interested in successful diplomacy with Iran, he would not have chosen the people he picked to fill out his national security and foreign policy team. If he really wanted to make a deal with Tehran, he and his allies would not be talking about a “return to maximum pressure.” They would instead be emphasizing the need for greater flexibility and compromise on the nuclear issue, and they would not be trying to force Iran to abanon its regional allies. A diplomatic breakthrough between the U.S. and Iran is extremely unlikely as long as Washington believes that it can throttle and threaten Iran into capitulation.

“Maximum pressure” will blow up in Trump’s face again, and the U.S., Iran, and the region will pay the price.