USA TODAY International Edition
Iran resilient under pressure
Regime responds to US penalties with aggression
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump says he just doesn’t want Iran to get a nuclear weapon. Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has demanded a dramatic change in Iran’s activities across the Middle East. And the president’s national se- curity adviser, John Bolton, has long rooted for regime change. But Iran hasn’t caved after more than a year of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure campaign” designed to cripple the country’s economy and force its leaders to the negotiating table. “It is clear that maximum pressure has rendered the Iranians more – not less – belligerent,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director at the Crisis Group, a nonpartisan group focused on preventing conflict. Thursday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard shot down a U.S. surveillance drone, a move that drew a sharp warning from Trump and prompted top
Pentagon officials to examine a possible military response. The United States blamed Iran for recent attacks on oil tankers, which Pompeo and others said were aimed at disrupting the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani warned that his country will increase uranium enrichment starting July 7 unless European countries find a way to ease the Trump administration’s sanctions, which have devastated Iran’s economy.
Trump administration officials and Iran hawks said their strategy has been effective and what looks like brinkmanship could be a precursor to success.
“Our maximum pressure campaign is working. We must continue to meet their aggression with forceful diplomacy,” Brian Hook, the State Department’s special representative for Iran, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee during a hearing Wednesday on Iran.
Hook said Iran has been forced to curb its support for extremist groups and has sliced its military spending. “Today, by nearly every metric, the regime and its proxies are weaker than when our pressure began,” Hook said.
Some national security experts and lawmakers said Trump’s approach to Iran has been incoherent and ill-advised from the start – and that it has created the crisis.
Critics worry Trump is inadvertently headed to a military confrontation, the opposite of what he said he wants. He campaigned in 2016 on a pledge to avoid costly, far-flung wars and vowed to bring U.S. troops home.
“I see a growing risk of miscalculation,” Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, said at Wednesday’s hearing. “I see more and more scenarios that could spark a conflict, that could lead to the United States stumbling into war.”
Natan Sachs, director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, a left-leaning Washington think tank, said divisions inside the Trump administration laid the groundwork for the escalating tensions.
“There seem to be two rather different impulses driving the administration’s behavior,” he said. “One is a very tough stance that fits with certainly the position of John Bolton and others.”
Bolton and Pompeo count on sanctions to force Iran’s leaders to capitulate – or spark an internal uprising that results in regime change.
But Sachs noted that Trump has said he does not want regime change, and he has publicly urged Iranian leaders to negotiate.
Iran has flatly rejected Trump’s overtures for talks, at least in public. Experts differ on whether that’s a negotiating tactic or if Iran truly has no intention of sitting down with Trump.
“Partly, it’s their form of negotiation – to say we won’t negotiate in order to basically start from a hard line,” said Blaise Misztal, a Middle East expert with the conservative Hudson Institute.
He said Iran took the same approach with President Barack Obama, resisting his entreaties until his administration tightened “the noose” with sanctions. Then Iran relented – first through back channels, then publicly negotiating on a multilateral agreement in 2015 to curb its nuclear program.
Trump withdrew from that deal, saying it did not do enough to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions and didn’t address the regime’s other malign behavior, including its support for terrorist groups in the Middle East.
Domestic politics in Iran, built on vilifying the United States, is another reason its leaders resist talks, Misztal said. “It’s hard for a regime that’s built on opposition to the United States to embrace negotiations with the ‘Great Satan,’ as they call us.”
Misztal rejected the notion that a military conflict is imminent or inevitable. “I don’t think (Trump is) looking for another Middle Eastern adventure, and I think the Iranians know from past experience that a conflict with the United States will not go well for them,” he said.
Vaez and others expressed skepticism that Iran would ever sit down with Trump or his national security team.
“The Iranians will not negotiate with a gun to their head,” Vaez said. “They’re afraid that if they accept to engage the Trump administration – which is strangulating their economy – this would not alleviate pressure but only invite more.”
He said Iran’s leaders watched as Trump negotiated a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico, only to turn around and threaten Mexico with tariffs to extract concessions on immigration.
“Also, the North Koreans tell the Iranians all the time that even if you get a deal with Trump, as soon as he turns around, Bolton and Pompeo will shred it apart,” he said. “So the Iranians also doubt that, given the level of hostility against them within the president’s national security team, they actually have an interlocutor on the U.S. side who is seeking a mutually beneficial agreement.”
Misztal said it was only a matter of time before Trump’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions drew a response from Iran, including this week’s attacks and the threat to increase uranium enrichment.
He agreed the Trump administration’s strategy has been disjointed. “It’s not been entirely clear what the administration’s end game has been,” he said.
The contradictory signals continued Thursday, even as Trump’s national security team gathered at the White House to discuss a possible response.
“Iran made a very big mistake,” Trump warned, adding that “you’ll soon find out” if the United States will retaliate. But Trump later suggested that Iran’s attack on the American drone might have been inadvertent.
“I find it hard to believe it was intentional,” Trump said during an Oval Office meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “I think it could have been somebody who was loose and stupid that did it.”