Is the United States looking for a war with Iran?
The Trump administration will now financially penalize anybody that buys Iran's oil
and will also impose sanctions on Iran's iron, steel, aluminum and copper sectors.
This is the most drastic step the U.S. government has ever taken toward Iran. And it comes at
a time when Iran was actually abiding by an agreement it reached with the Obama administration.
So frankly, it makes no sense.
In 2018, President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal - an international
agreement unanimously endorsed by the UN Security Council.
It's not that Iran was deemed to have violated the deal; international inspectors and even
U.S. intelligence certified that it was in full compliance.
Trump rejected the agreement itself, having vowed on the campaign trail to take a harder
line against Iran.
Although the U.S. does hardly any business with Iran, Trump aimed to deprive Iran of its prime
source of revenue by threatening sanctions against countries that buy its oil.
After a year of so-called 'waivers' to countries like China, India, South Korea, Japan and
Turkey, those threats of sanctions have now come into effect.
So the United States doesn't buy any oil from Iran and hasn't for a very long time. But
what it's trying to do is tell the rest of the world how it should conduct foreign trade.
And needless to say, most countries resent being told whether they can
deal with this country or that country.
It's only because of the power of the dollar in the U.S. financial system because most transactions
have to pass through the American financial system that we even have the power to do this
at all.
Some analysts think that the Trump administration's policy is shortsighted, could backfire in
a number of ways, and even set the U.S. on a path to war with Iran.
Many also see its purpose as being to create such deprivation among ordinary Iranians that
they rise up and overthrow their regime — a longstanding goal of Washington hawks and
Iran's regional foes.
Though European powers like France, Germany and the UK oppose the U.S. withdrawal from the
nuclear deal and the new sanctions, Washington hopes to pressure them to comply by implementing
“secondary sanctions.”
These block foreign companies from doing business in the U.S. if they also do business in Iran.
So some of Iran's remaining oil customers are likely to fall in line and comply with
U.S. demands. However the situation is much more complicated when it gets to China, Turkey
and India.
They all have their own separate calculations and horse trading with the U.S. and relations with
Iran that they have to balance.
It's complicated and it's hard to predict in which direction these countries would move, but they will
be the ones who will make or break U.S.' maximum pressure strategy against Iran.
At first, it might seem like Trump turning up the pressure and reimposing sanctions will
get the Iranians to comply to his demands.
After all, sanctions forced Iran to sign that 2015 nuclear agreement, right?
Not quite.
The accord could only become a reality because the U.S. met Iran halfway.
So yes, I mean sanctions played a role, but more important is a diplomatic strategy that
makes sense, where a country can see that it will get benefits if it agrees to certain
concessions.
And those benefits were supposed to be an end to a lot of the sanctions,
an ability to sell oil freely again and to have foreign investment and to see the
economy grow in Iran.
And that's where the Iranians have been cheated because so far they've been following
the restrictions they agreed to on their program but they're not getting
the benefits.
There lies the difference between Trump's Iran policy, and the Obama approach that he
has reversed.
The Obama administration believed that avoiding another massive U.S. military intervention in
the Middle East required diplomacy.
Obama and his advisors also believed that it was necessary to make realistic demands
and offer clear incentives to Iran to prevent it from gaining the means to build nuclear weapons.
Although Obama initially increased sanctions on Iran, he also saw that sanctions had failed
to curb the country's nuclear program.
In fact, quick history lesson:
From 2001 to 2006, the Bush administration had attempted to halt Iran's enrichment program
by using a mixture of diplomacy and threats of force.
States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil.
Guess what?
It didn't really work and Iran continued expanding its nuclear program and began to build thousands
of centrifuges to enrich uranium.
Later, despite significantly tightening sanctions, the Obama administration recognized that this
was not stopping Iran from expanding its nuclear program in a way that would give it the means
to build a bomb.
That's why Obama concluded that by staying on the sanctions path, the U.S. would be left
with only two options:
Either accepting Iran as a nuclear weapons-capable nation or starting a war to prevent that.
And he didn't want to do either.
Today, after two years of negotiations,
the United States, together with our international partners,
has achieve something that decades of animosity has not.
Look, pressure without an open door is an exercise in futility. The reality is the previous time
when we had sanctions and they resulted in a diplomatic solution, it was when the Obama
administration took regime change off the table in direct letters that President Obama
sent to the Supreme Leader of Iran.
And also when the U.S. took the first step and made the first concession to the Iranian side
when the Obama administration took off basically the zero-enrichment
requirement from the table, then accepted a limited enrichment program on Iranian soil.
It's important to remember that by all measures, Iran has been complying with the conditions
underlined in the 2015 nuclear agreement.
So if Iran has kept its end of the bargain, why hasn't the Trump administration done the
same?
Well, that's because adopting a harder line against Iran has been popular among American
conservatives for a very long time.
Even though Trump likes to say he's the great dealmaker, the kinds of demands that Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo put forward are, are simply unrealistic.
I mean, they wanted Iran to completely stop its nuclear program, give up a ballistic missiles,
pull out of all the places it's involved in the region, even change its human rights policy.
I mean, it's, you know, they're not going to do that. They're not going to capitulate
to the United States. So what's the other possibility? Regime collapse. And I think
that really is the goal of people like John Bolton.
They want to see the country fall apart.
The sanctions against Iran have hit the country hard.
According to U.S. officials, Iran has lost more than $10 billion in oil revenue because
of sanctions.
The Iranian economy shrank by almost 4% in 2018 and is expected to shrink by around 6%
in 2019.
Iran's currency also lost more than 60% in 2018, worsening inflation in the country which
is expected to reach at least 40% in 2019.
And the Trump administration may be looking to exploit this weakness.
Look, there is this belief in Washington that Iran doesn't respond to pressure, but responds
to massive pressure. So the idea is to ratchet up and increase pressure in a way that would
able to bring the Iranians to their knees, either to come back to the negotiating table
and surrender or, instead of capitulating, maybe the regime will collapse.
I think there are a lot of people in this administration, most important among them National Security
Advisor John Bolton, who believes that this is a moment of vulnerability in Iran, that
its leadership is aging and its population is frustrated with political and economic
stagnation.
And if they increased the economic pressure, they have a chance of bringing about regime
change, which is something that many people in Washington have been dreaming
for at least four decades.
But whether the United States can successfully sabotage and bring the Iranian economy to
a complete collapse is still up for debate.
After all, previous American presidents have attempted to cripple Iran's economy, but Iran
has always found a way to survive.
Without any doubt, the Iranian economy would be in dire straights. But one thing that is
important to remember that this is not the first time the Iranians are experiencing these
kinds of economic difficulties.
In fact, this is the fourth time in the past four decades that Iran is losing more than
half of its oil revenue almost overnight.
The Iranians are quite resilient and quite experienced in dealing with economic difficulties
and circumventing U.S. sanctions.
So if we're talking about short run, I think they have what it takes to remain afloat economically.
But this situation is not sustainable in the medium- to long-term.
Now, it may seem like the Trump administration is the only one wanting to turn up the heat
under Iran.
The truth is, a few other players are involved.
Specifically: Iran's neighbors who aren't too happy with Iran's involvement in the region.
Of course there are U.S. allies in the region, Israel, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates,
which are strongly supporting this pressure against Iran because they don't want Iran
to be as influential as it is in their region.
And there is this tremendous rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia. It's just gotten worse since
Mohammad bin Salman became so influential.
And so the Saudi hope is that somehow Iran will draw back in the region, that it won't
be so involved in supporting the Houthis in Yemen and propping up Assad in Syria
and Hezbollah in Lebanon, that Iran won't be as influential in Iraq. I don't think that's
going to happen.
So, now that the U.S. has moved to essentially strangle Iran's economy, how will Iran react?
In May 2019, Iran gave an answer:
It officially ended its compliance with parts of the nuclear deal.
There are also signs that Tehran is getting impatient with the European Union.
The European Union has come up with something called a "special purpose vehicle" for essentially
a kind of ledger, so that trade could go on between Iran and Europe without money actually
changing hands, at least initially a kind of barter arrangement. But it still has not started
working.
And Iranians are really, really frustrated. It's a year now
since the Trump administration withdrew from the deal and this "special purpose vehicle" is still
not up and running.
Trump's hardline on Iran is also an all-or-nothing gamble.
It's important to understand that the Iranian political system is not all in agreement.
This means that, just like in the U.S., there are competing voices in the political establishment.
Quite a few of those voices weren't happy with the compromises Iran had to make in the
nuclear deal.
Now, those same voices are using Trump's abandonment of the deal to question whether there's even
a point in cooperating with the West.
The Iranian regime views U.S. sanctions as economic warfare, and analysts fear that they
could be provoked into more dangerous confrontations on other fronts, such as blockading oil shipments
through the Strait of Hormuz, which could trigger military conflict.
They think that because the election in the U.S. is just a year and a half away, they
have to wait to see the outcome of that election. But I think if U.S. pressure really brings
the Iranian economy to the brink of collapse, then the Iranians might have to put aside
their strategic patience policy and pursue retaliation.
With relations between Washington and Tehran souring, and Europe seemingly unable to act,
what happens now?
We are all hoping that the next administration, even if Trump is re-elected, will change its
policy toward Iran and will adopt a more realistic strategy that has a chance of really not just,
you know, changing Iranian policies that we don't like, but really improving the life
of the Iranian people.
But the pressure on Iran is escalating sharply, and the next U.S. election is 18 months away.
And even if it could be sure that the result would change the current hardline policy,
can Tehran wait that long?