Trump’s Only Iran Strategy Is to Punish Iran

[homersapien 11,352]

Canceling the JCPOA is a perfect example of how Trump is making impetuous decisions that will impact us for years to come. (Emphasis mine)

The administration doesn’t want a grand bargain with the Islamic Republic. They want a different government.

After Donald Trump’s announcement last week that the United States was walking away from the Iran nuclear deal, two State Department officials held a background briefing to explain the strategy. The transcript is a painful read. From start to finish, the unnamed officials struggled to answer the most basic questions about the purpose of reimposing sanctions on Iran, what they expected to achieve, which allies they had consulted, and so on. Every time a reporter tried to pin them down on the core question—now that you’ve junked the deal, what comes next?— they mumbled and evaded.

This past Friday, reporters tried again, on another conference call with a senior State Department official. They pressed him for specifics on what exactly the plan will be going forward. The most he would offer was that the United States would bring “all necessary pressure to bear on Iran to change its behavior and to pursue a new framework that can resolve our concerns.” It is hard to get less specific than that.

This is not because these officials are uninformed or unintelligent. And it is not because key figures in the administration, like National-Security Adviser John Bolton, haven’t given it some thought. My guess is it is because, for some reason, they did not feel comfortable sharing the real answer, which is this: The punishment isthe strategy. The United States will now apply the means of more economic pressure to achieve the end of Iran feeling more economic pressure.

In theory, sanctions should have a specific purpose. We impose them in response to certain behavior by another country, and offer to lift them in exchange for specified changes in that behavior. In other words, sanctions create leverage, which is then converted into concessions at the negotiating table. That was the story of the Iran nuclear deal, which I helped negotiate, including by opening the secret back channel with Iran that jump-started the diplomacy.

Advocates of a more aggressive Iran policy, both inside and outside the administration, view sanctions differently. They seem to feel they don’t need to give more-specific answers as to what exactly sanctions are intended to achieve, because from their perspective, whatever is achieved is better than the status quo. Maybe with sufficient pressure, the regime will collapse. That would be their ideal outcome, and it’s what John Bolton was referring to recently when he said, “Iran’s economic condition is really quite shaky, so that the effect [of reimposing sanctions] could be dramatic.” But maybe not—maybe sanctions will just leave the regime weakened and demoralized and inwardly focused. That would be good, too. But maybe not—maybe the regime will just have less disposable income to spend on regional adventurism and therefore reduce its activities in places like Syria and Yemen. That’s not bad. But maybe not—maybe sanctions will simply make it harder for Iran to become stronger, an economic version of containment. Even that will do.

Or maybe, alternatively, sanctions will lead Iran to come back to the table, to accept the administration’s maximalist demands regarding their nuclear program, their missile program, and their regional activities. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is giving a speech next week where he will ostensibly argue that this is the plan. But if you try to pin down Trump’s defenders on what the “better deal” would actually look like—what specific terms it would have to include—you quickly discover that this is not a particularly serious proposition. For example, in one breath, they say that an agreement on nuclear issues isn’t enough; a broader regional settlement is required. In the next breath, they say that the current regime is by definition incapable of becoming a more benign regional actor.  Iran hawks like John Bolton don’t want a grand bargain with Iran. They want a different government in Iran.

What about Donald Trump? Where is he in all of this? Well, nowhere, really. He cared a lot about tearing down the agreement, and sticking it to Barack Obama in the process. He cares little to not at all about what comes next. Indeed, he would probably take a very similar deal to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the Iran deal is formally known, if it had his name on it. But his team takes over from here, and whatever their rhetoric about diplomacy, they see a new nuclear agreement as a constraint, not an objective.

The most illuminating moment of last week’s background briefing was when one of the officials said that “the problem with the deal was that it reduced our ability to pressure Iran,” repeating twice that the deal cordoned off sectors of the Iranian economy from sanctions. So abandoning the deal, they said, has given them wide-open running room on economic pressure.

Now, it’s fair to ask—what’s wrong with all of this? After all, the current Iranian regime is a repressive and abusive actor at home and a malign actor in the region, responsible for a great deal of chaos and death. Why not pressure them relentlessly, to impose costs at a minimum and spark change inside Iran at a maximum?

I agree that curbing and countering Iran’s regional behavior is a crucial priority for American policy. The Iran debate is not a quarrel over whether to challenge Islamic Republic’s negative influence in the region, but how. And I see a number of basic problems with the approach the administration is taking.

Read the rest of the article at: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/05/trump-iran-jcpoa/560759/

 

[AURex 1,983]

It doesn't matter what the Trump administration does in re: Iran. As long as it is a "not Obama" talking point with the media, as long as it enables Trump to bash Obama, his voting base will lick his ####. It has nothing to do with Iran and everything to do with Obama.