Donald Trump begins his second stint in the White House with big plans and a world that looks quite different from the one he dealt with during his first term. He will inherit a cornucopia of foreign policy problems and international crises left over from the previous administration.
The 15-month long war in Gaza may be paused for the time being, but the safe bet is to put your money on the fighting resuming after the first six-week phase is over. Trump may have big dreams about terminating the three year-old war in Ukraine, but the president’s national security team is still very much in the process of figuring out a diplomatic formula that would bring Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table. Trump, who in his January 20 inaugural address said he wanted to be known as a “peacemaker,” will also attempt to strike a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, an ambition that will be moot if the Gaza ceasefire doesn’t survive.
There is one problem, however, that remains similar to those of past U.S. administrations: Iran’s nuclear program.
Unfortunately for Trump, the Iranian nuclear issue is as confounding as it has ever been. The International Atomic Energy Agency reported in November that Iran’s total enriched uranium stockpile is now more than 6,600 kg, approximately 22 times what Tehran would have been permitted under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). In December, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi assessed that Iran was enriching 5-7 kg of 60 percent enriched uranium a month, a short technical step away from the 90 percent required for bomb fuel. The Iranians have installed more centrifuges of higher quality and are churning out more uranium at a higher level, both as a pressure tactic against Washington and as a way to bag more leverage in the event nuclear talks recommence. The now former Secretary of State Antony Blinken put it bluntly over the summer: “Where we are now is not in a good place.”
Trump would certainly agree, even if he remains unsure of how to go about managing the situation. He’s no doubt receiving a lot of advice. Foreign policy hawks like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who has advocated for bombing Iran’s nuclear program for as long as I’ve been alive, is jumping on television to push for the military option. The argument essentially boils down to this: A diplomatic agreement with Iran would cost too much for the United States, and the Iranians can’t be trusted anyway.
This recommendation is likely entering some sympathetic ears in the administration. Trump’s team is staffed with Iran hawks who would like nothing more than to see Iranian power in the Middle East depreciate to a pittance. The Wall Street Journal reported in December that U.S. military strikes were being actively discussed as a potential option, not a surprise given that the Bush, Obama, and Biden administrations all had military plans on the shelf in the event they wanted to pull the trigger.
In the end, all three administrations chose to take the military option off the table and instead stick with a mix of economic sanctions and diplomacy. Even the Bush administration viewed the benefits of such an operation as not worth the costs. There were times during Trump’s first term when he could have authorized military action against Iran but didn’t because he didn’t want a major war in the Middle East on his watch.
The same concern should be at the front of the president’s mind. Yes, the Iranians are notably weaker today than they were back in 2019. Hezbollah, Tehran’s most important proxy, is licking its wounds after a ferocious months-long Israeli air and ground campaign in Lebanon. Hamas is doing the same in Gaza. Syria is no longer an outpost for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which had a relatively cooperative partner in Bashar al-Assad. Assad was willing to outsource his foreign policy to the Iranians if it meant unconditional Iranian support for his family’s five-decade long rule. After so many years in which Iran used Syria as a key plank its “axis of resistance” strategy, the demise of Assad and the emergence of a new Syrian government that wants to rebalance its foreign relations away from Tehran is causing heartburn in Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s inner circle.
Even so, a U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities still isn’t worth the trouble. To start, just because the Iranians are weaker doesn’t mean they’re powerless. Iranian-backed proxies still effectively rule the roost in Iraq, whose coalition government remains beholden to the very militias that Baghdad has tried to tame and integrate into the Iraqi security forces. There are still approximately 2,500 U.S. troops stationed in Iraq who present prime targets for the militias; indeed, U.S. bases in Iraq are almost certain to be the first targets if Iran retaliates for a U.S. bombing campaign. And we shouldn’t kid ourselves: if Iran was willing to send a dozen ballistic missiles into U.S. bases in Iraq to avenge the death of a single IRGC commander by the name of Qasem Soleimani, then U.S. policymakers need to assume the Iranians will engage in even stronger retaliation if their nuclear program is hit.
Then there’s the issue of whether military force would be effective. For instance, would Iran’s nuclear capability be destroyed? If not, would it at least force a strategic reconsideration in the Iranian establishment about its nuclear policy? The answer to both is probably “no.” Bombs can demolish buildings, but they can’t demolish knowledge. Unless every Iranian scientist or engineer is killed or captured, then Tehran’s nuclear complex can always rebuild and continue where they left off. The U.S. would then be in the position of adopting its very own “mow the grass” strategy, dropping missiles on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure every few years at an exceedingly high cost to its own forces in the region.
Iran’s nuclear strategy is also unlikely to move in the way we would want. Every time the U.S. or Israel has taken action against Iran’s nuclear program—whether it be through cyberattacks, assassinations or undeclared drone strikes—Tehran has responded by accelerating its nuclear work or constructing replacement facilities deeper underground. U.S. military action is likely to harden, not soften, Khamenei’s position. The U.S. intelligence community continues to assess that Khamenei has yet to make the decision to actually assemble a nuclear device, likely due in part to fear about how Washington would react. That fear, though, would go out the window after the U.S. attacked. If anything, U.S. bombs dropping on Iranian soil would make the work of those within the Iranian power structure arguing for a nuclear deterrent easier.
What, then, should Trump do? The temptation is to return to his first administration’s maximum pressure policy, which severely hurt the Iranian government’s finances and cut its oil exports by nearly 70 percent. But this strategy did next to nothing to alter Iran’s calculus on the nuclear file and actually worsened the problem once Iran was free to break away from the JCPOA restrictions. A second bite at the maximum pressure apple is unlikely to do any better.
But if this is the route Trump is set to take, he needs to modify it. More economic sanctions must be paired with a diplomatic strategy that is viable. This can only occur if maximalist demands are replaced with realistic ones. Instead of pressuring Iran to concede on the inconceivable, like abolishing its nuclear apparatus and changing its entire foreign policy to America’s liking, Trump should try to reinstitute strict, enforceable nuclear limits on what Iran can and can’t do. If Trump wants a deal better than the JCPOA, he’s likely going to have to offer Tehran more economic and diplomatic concessions to get there. The best that can be hoped for is a return to the pre-2018 status quo, when U.S.–Iranian relations were more manageable than they are today and international inspectors had the power to monitor Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, root to branch.
This will be unsatisfying to Trump, who often views concessions as defeatism. Yet in international diplomacy, the perfect can’t be the enemy of the good-enough. And the perfect is rarely an option to begin with.
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