President Trump is giving Iran “running room” to threaten Israel and other Middle East partners, according to a veteran of Hillary Clinton’s State Department.
“[T]hey appear to have taken their eye off the ball of the broader Iranian threat,” Jake Sullivan, Clinton’s top foreign policy advisor, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday.
This is a criticism usually made of President Obama’s negotiations with Iran, and it was unusual to hear it from a Democrat about Trump.
Iran hawks argue that pursuit of the nuclear deal diminished American willingness to counter the regime’s aggression. But Sullivan insisted that Trump’s determination to denounce the pact had “distracted” from opportunities to counter Iran. He faulted the administration’s strategy in Syria, an issue that has produced bipartisan criticism of the Trump team.
“The administration’s current ISIS-only strategy has created open running room for Iran, its client [Syrian President Bashar] Assad, and its proxy Hezbollah to assert greater control over Syria, including areas adjacent to the border with Israel,” Sullivan said. “Current policy has been casual about allowing Iran and Hizbollah to exploit de-escalation zones to their advantage, creating the very real risk that Iran and its proxies set up a permanent presence on Israel’s border with Syria.”
That complaint has been percolating in Republican circles for months, as lawmakers and Israeli officials worry that a ceasefire negotiated between the Trump team and Russia will deliver strategic advantages to Iran, but it’s unusual to hear it from a Democrat like Sullivan.
“I believe that we’ll continue to take out ISIS leadership and create havoc for ISIS and al Qaeda in the region; however, you take the longer term risk of empowering the [Iran-backed] Shias and the Russians and the Assad regime to create more havoc for the West,” House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., told the Washington Examiner in June.
That “ISIS-only strategy,” however, is a continuation of the Obama administration’s policy for the Syrian civil war. And Iran hawks believe that the nuclear deal provided the regime with billions of dollars to finance aggressive military operations throughout the region.
“We’ve seen them run wild over the last two years,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., told the Washington Examiner in a recent interview.
Sullivan rejected the idea that the nuclear deal emboldened Iran, echoing European officials who argue that the mullahs have taken advantage of civil wars in neighboring states to expand their power in the region.
“A key reason they are on the march now is their ability to cheaply exploit regional chaos — in the absence of clear pushback in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere,” he testified.
The former Clinton aide had an unlikely echo in House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce, a California Republican who also endorsed sticking with the deal and aggressively countering Iran in other areas.
“As flawed as the deal is, I believe we must now enforce the hell out of it,” Royce said Wednesday. “We must also respond to Iran’s efforts to destabilize the region.”
Trump is expected to notify Congress that he believes the nuclear agreement is not in the national security interests of the United States, a move that could set the table for the renewal of economic sanctions waived under the deal. That prospect has alarmed European allies, who believe the deal is a success.
Sullivan argued the disagreement has hampered U.S. and European efforts to coordinate against Iran’s other aggression. Other experts disagree. They counter Trump has convinced Europe the status quo is unacceptable, thereby increasing the possibility they will increase pressure on Iran in order to prevent a total U.S. withdrawal from the pact.
“Most of this new talk of wanting to enforce the deal better among our allies, willing[ness] to look at fixes, is only because President Trump said he would walk away,” David Albright, founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, told the committee.
“Before that, there were big problems in getting the Europeans to take any of these problems seriously, so I think that President Trump has done a service — while we can all argue about how it’s played out — he has done a basic service to try to get people to focus on the inadequacies and fix this deal.”
