The Trump administration and Iranian government concluded another round of nuclear talks on Saturday. A “senior Trump administration official” termed the discussion “positive and productive.” Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said he was “hopeful but very cautious.”
Much depends on whether President Donald Trump is seriously committed to reaching a deal with the Islamist state. He long has appeared to be in thrall to a disparate group of uber-hawks and neocons, many of whom promoted the Iraq debacle and are now campaigning for war against Iran. Although the president claims that he wants a diplomatic solution, he has been moving, per a report in the War Zone, “B-2 stealth bombers, fighters, support aircraft, another carrier strike group, air defenses, and more” into the Mideast.
Last month Trump declared, “If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing. It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before.” In an interview published Friday he dismissed concern about the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s persistent campaign to drag Americans into war with Iran, stating, “I may go in very willingly if we can’t get a deal. If we don’t make a deal, I’ll be leading the pack.”
No doubt, rather like China in its policy toward Taiwan, Trump hopes intimidation will deliver a favorable result. But like Taipei, Tehran has spent years resisting pressure. What if Iran rejects the president’s terms? Before approving military strikes on its nuclear facilities, he should remember that acting in haste is often followed by repenting at leisure—in his case through the rest of his term and probably well beyond. Launching an unprovoked war against Iran would make George W. Bush’s disastrous legacy look good in comparison.
Of course, the radical forces that dominate the current Tehran regime are malign. Unfortunately, multiple U.S. administrations have done much to turn Iran, the state and many of its people, into adversaries if not enemies. In 1953, at the behest of Great Britain, angry over Tehran’s nationalization of British oil assets, President Dwight Eisenhower helped overthrow the elected prime minister, Mohammed Mosaddegh, and empower the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was mostly a figurehead. For a quarter of a century Washington supported its often difficult, but always corrupt and autocratic, partner. President Jimmy Carter, who ostentatiously promoted human rights, hosted an embarrassing state dinner for the shah and reciprocated with a sycophantic visit to Iran. Ironically, it was this nominal American ally which began Tehran’s nuclear program.
Growing public dissent eventually ended the Pahlavi dynasty, despite the Carter administration’s support for a deadly crackdown. Reported the New York Times:
Over lunch at the Knickerbocker Club in New York, [President Jimmy] Carter’s special envoy to Tehran, Gen. Robert E. Huyser, told the Project Eagle team that he had urged Iran’s top military leaders to kill as many demonstrators as necessary to keep the shah in power. If shooting over the heads of demonstrators failed to disperse them, “move to focusing on the chests,” General Huyser said he told the Iranian generals, according to minutes of the lunch. “I got stern and noisy with the military,” he added, but in the end, the top general was “gutless.”
Ignoring the Shah’s many crimes, the U.S. gave sanctuary to the dying dictator.
A radical Islamic state followed, but, despite the early kidnapping of American diplomatic personnel, Tehran never seriously threatened the U.S. Rather, it was Washington that constantly threatened Iran. Successive administrations had provided sustained support for and weapons sales to the Shah’s repressive regime. While his forced modernization was understandably welcomed by both educated elites and the West, it fostered resentment and opposition among more traditional communities and spurred the Islamic revolution.
After the shah’s overthrow, the Reagan administration supported Iraq’s bloody aggression against Iran, even reflagging oil tankers to protect Baghdad’s revenue stream. The result was eight terrible years of conflict and a million or more casualties. The U.S. also armed Saudi Arabia and Israel, Iran’s principal regional rivals, imposed economic sanctions on Tehran, repeatedly threatened military action against the Islamic regime, deployed air and naval assets around Iran, assassinated Qassem Soleimani, the influential head of Iran’s Quds Force, and actively intervened on Israel’s behalf even after the latter initiated military attacks on Iranian personnel and interests, including on a diplomatic facility in Syria and a government building in Tehran. It should come as no surprise that many Iranian policymakers desired to build a potent retaliatory nuclear arsenal.
Nevertheless, despite the outsize role of the militant Islamic Revolutionary Guards, there are more moderate and responsible leaders, who negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with the Obama administration. That agreement constrained the Iranian nuclear program. Moreover, successive Iranian governments forged a détente with Saudi Arabia, whose de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, once called Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei “the new Hitler of the Middle East.” In mid-April, the Saudi defense minister traveled to Tehran for talks, the first visit by a senior Saudi royal in almost 30 years.
Although Washington’s war lobby dismisses Tehran’s suitability as a negotiating partner, the Iranians abided by the JCPOA. Washington, on the other hand, proved to be faithless. Congress opposed the agreement and undermined its implementation. The Obama administration did little to ease the spillover effects of remaining U.S. sanctions, which continued to discourage trade with and investment in Iran. Despite Tehran’s continued compliance, Trump abandoned the pact and reinstated sanctions, leading the Islamic regime to revive its nuclear program. Then the Biden administration, rather than restore the agreement, sought to take advantage of its predecessor’s breach to force harsher terms.
After all this, the U.S. is threatening military action. But war is not just another foreign policy tool. It is unique, sending Americans into combat, killing and disabling many. It also means visiting death and destruction upon other peoples and lands. The economic costs, too, are high. Imagine America if thousands of lives and trillions of dollars had not been squandered in Washington’s foolish wars over the last quarter century. Conflict with Iran would only increase the criminal toll.
The situation with Tehran is one of Uncle Sam’s great policy failures, but war is not the answer. Indeed, military action would not be justified even if it seemed likely to be successful in some abstract sense. War should require a serious and imminent threat to vital or critical interests. Iran falls short in every way.
First, the JCPOA demonstrated the success of diplomacy. The agreement placed serious restraints on the Iranian nuclear program, made proliferation less likely, and “ensured that in the worst-case scenario, Iran would be proliferating from a lower baseline.” Neither Riyadh nor Jerusalem, along with their advocates in Washington, were happy with the accord, because they were committed to a U.S. war against Tehran, irrespective of the cost—to Americans and Iranians alike. Nevertheless, the JCPOA benefited both the U.S. and Middle East, avoiding unnecessary war and nuclear proliferation.
Unfortunately, after Trump resumed economic war, Iran predictably revived its nuclear program. As a result, today Tehran is better positioned to weaponize the results. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has threatened to join the nuclear race. And the Israeli government risked war by targeting aspects of Iran’s program and threatening broader strikes, even though it likely lacked the means to halt weapons development.
Second, Iran is not an easy target. It has three times the population of Iraq and, unlike the latter, was not an artificial creation of the West. Even younger Iranians who want liberalization aren’t likely to welcome American bombs. While the Iran would lose a shooting war, it could cause serious U.S. casualties and regional damage. The Iranian military commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh warned: “The Americans have at least 10 bases with 50,000 troops in the region, meaning they are sitting in a glass house”—and should be wary of tossing stones. Military action would likely only delay development of a bomb and would certainly convince any regime doubters that they required a nuclear weapon to survive. Moreover, an extended military campaign likely would be necessary to have a serious chance of halting Iranian nuclear development. The Washington Institute’s Michael Eisenstadt predicted that “a preventive attack likely won’t be a one-off but rather the opening round of a lengthy campaign employing military strikes, covert action, and other elements of national power. Such a campaign…could presage either a more stable order for the region or a new, dangerous phase.”
Moreover, war would threaten Tehran’s neighbors. A desperate Iran might strike at facilities hosting U.S. forces throughout the Gulf and seek to block oil traffic. Angry populations might challenge royal regimes with negligible popular legitimacy. Which helps explain why even Saudi Arabia, once an enthusiastic advocate of American military action against Iran, has urged the U.S. and Israel not to let slip the dogs of war.
Third, Tehran would not use nuclear weapons against the U.S., given Washington’s ability to retaliate on a massive scale. Iran is seeking deterrence in a bad neighborhood, where nuclear-armed Israel’s depredations dramatically demonstrate its conventional superiority. Moreover, the latter has long been informally allied with several of the Gulf kingdoms and other Arab states, with Iran their primary target. Although the latter has greatly improved its relations with its neighbors, it remains vulnerable. The region would benefit from an effective balance of power.
Indeed, 13 years ago Kenneth Waltz, at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, provocatively contended that a nuclear Iran “would probably be the best possible result: the one most likely to restore stability to the Middle East.” Israel’s brutal treatment of Palestinians within its control and Arabs elsewhere demonstrates its dangerous mix of excessive ambition and power: “Israel’s regional nuclear monopoly, which has proved remarkably durable for the past four decades, has long fueled instability in the Middle East. In no other region of the world does a lone, unchecked nuclear state exist. It is Israel’s nuclear arsenal, not Iran’s desire for one, that has contributed most to the current crisis. Power, after all, begs to be balanced.” Best would be an agreement by Tehran to forego nuclear weapons made possible by corresponding Israeli and U.S. military restraint.
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Fourth, America has ever less at stake in the Middle East and Persian Gulf. The region was never a vital interest. The Cold War fear was a Soviet attempt to cut off oil to the US and Europe. Now Russia’s military weakness, China’s dependence on imported energy, increased diversity of the international market, and expanded American energy production, have steadily reduced threats to and importance of Middle East oil. A secondary fear was for Israel’s survival, but the greatest threat to Jerusalem today is internal, the growing impossibility of Israel being both democratic and Jewish.
In any case, the heedless desire for cheap gasoline and bizarre conflation of Biblical and modern Israel provide no justification for the U.S. going to war. As noted earlier, over the last quarter century Washington policymakers have promiscuously sacrificed American lives and wealth in reckless Mideast conflicts. Adding Iran to the list of misbegotten U.S. targets would be criminal.
Trump surely knows better than to start shooting at Iran. He campaigned against forever wars. He criticized George W. Bush’s criminal attack on Iraq. In 2019 Trump refused to retaliate against Iran for its shootdown of an American drone and for the attack on Saudi oil facilities. Neither warranted war. Nor is there cause for conflict with Iran today. When even Riyadh is urging the U.S. and Israel not to ignite the Mideast, the president should keep the peace.
