On Iran, hard-headedness by Trump is good approach

THE Trump administration’s sanctions against Iran were a good first move.

Targeting the fanatical Tehran regime’s foreign currency reserves, transportation sector, minerals and debt, these sanctions will restrict Iran’s ability to threaten regional and international security.

They also send a clear message to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that American appeasement has ended. If the clerics wish to talk, they need to come to the table with a serious offer.

What course will Europe take? The European Union has introduced “blocking” sanctions to prevent European companies from complying with American sanctions. But finding that Trump won’t waive sanctions targeting their interests in Iran, European businesses will restrain investment. Other businesses will avoid new investments altogether. The prospective loss of access to the vastly bigger American market weighs heavily in the boardrooms of Berlin, Paris, Rome and London. German Chancellor Angela Merkel last week prevented Iran from acquiring $400 million in dollar reserves held in her country.

Iran now knows that Trump means business. It knows that when Trump speaks of a new and better nuclear agreement that eliminates former President Barack Obama’s Potemkin inspections of nuclear or ballistic missile sites and replaces them with real ones, he means it. They know that when Trump warns that he will push the theocrats to allow Iranians more freedom, he means it.

Amid growing protests against rising living costs and a shortage of basic goods — Venezuela, anyone? — the mullahs know that they are under extreme and increasing international and domestic pressure.

This could lead to a new understanding by President Hassan Rouhani and his European enablers that compromise with Trump is the best option. We hope this will produce a corollary understanding among Iranian hardliners, led by the Revolutionary Guard, who have used tens of billions of dollars from Obama’s 2015 Iran agreement to expand aggression and terrorism around the globe.

But now, money is running short and Washington is getting rough rather than buckling, as was its habit for the past few years. That leaves hardliners with a limited range of options. They can counter Trump’s pressure with escalation of their own or they can give Rouhani more flexibility to compromise. Despite their rhetoric, the hardliners know that their revolution’s survival depends on the latter choice. The former risks devastation and most likely gruesome dispatch at the hands of the enraged Iranian public.

We are optimistic, largely because new sanctions on Iranian oil exports will enter force this November. And while Iran has responded to that prospect with threats to close critical energy supply routes, America has the ability, and now also the will, to restrain those threats.

Trump has taken bold action to counter a continuing threat.