While negotiations between Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and France’s Emmanuel Macron are showing signs of a breakthrough, U.S.-Iran relations have deteriorated.
Though Macron insists Rouhani may enter talks with President Trump soon, the broader trajectory of Washington’s relationship with Tehran over the past three years has been away from effective negotiations. The blame for this deterioration rests squarely with the Trump administration’s policy of “maximum pressure,” spearheaded by long-time interventionist figures such as national security adviser John Bolton.
But Bolton’s grand “maximum pressure” strategy has not brought Tehran to heel, or even made talks more likely. It has neither strengthened our diplomatic position nor moved Iran toward disarmament or liberalization. Maximum pressure is a risky approach that is unlikely to deliver for the American people, and we must abandon it before further damage is done.
Consider the results of maximum pressure so far.
The Iran Deal was imperfect, as major international compromises are wont to be. But it constrained Tehran’s nuclear weapons program, putting meaningful limits on nuclear development, granting access to international inspectors, and more. Even the Trump administration agreed until shortly before the president’s decision to withdraw from the agreement that Iran was in compliance with its terms. And the United Nation’s nuclear monitoring agency’s most recent report said Iran was still in compliance as of May.
Perhaps even more important, the Iran Deal, while intact, provided a basis for future improvements in U.S.-Iran relations. It could have improved the two countries’ relationship following decades of hostility, opening the door to normalized diplomatic engagement and trade relations that could improve the political and economic fates of ordinary Iranians while heightening American security.
Today, by contrast, tensions with Tehran seem to reach new heights each week.
The administration’s decision to abandon the deal, re-impose punishing sanctions on Iran, and place secondary sanctions on other powers (including our allies in Europe, as well as Russia and China) has hurt the Iranian economy without changing the regime’s behavior for the better. Violence has escalated in the Strait of Hormuz, and Tehran began breaching a few Iran Deal limits in July after a year of suffering renewed American sanctions.
Trump cast his decision to withdraw from the deal as a savvy effort to get a stronger agreement that better serves U.S. interests. His team has pitched maximum pressure as the best vehicle to get us to that end. But a year past withdrawal, all the evidence suggests their tact has failed.
Maximum pressure has failed to rein in any unsavory actions by Iran. It has failed to incentivize productive diplomacy. It is, in fact, a thoroughgoing failure which makes an avoidable war — indeed, a war we must avoid — more probable.
The best-case scenario, where Iran agrees to come to the table and Trump manages to ignore the useless advice of Bolton and other poisonous voices, basically gets us back to where we started. Maximum pressure has undone what good the Iran Deal accomplished and isolated the United States all while gaining Americans nothing and harming innocent Iranians a great deal.
This is regression, not progress. It has made no one more secure, prosperous, or free.
Trump could have done better than maximum pressure with a more prudent diplomatic strategy that built on the foundation of the Iran Deal instead of abandoning it. He could have used the nuclear deal as the basis of further improvement for U.S.-Iran relations instead of defaulting a risky antagonism. He could have acted to avert war instead of fixating on the delusion of a better deal, recognizing that arms reduction goals are ultimately in service to a larger and more crucial task of preventing what would unquestionably be a prolonged and costly conflict, another addition to Washington’s list of misguided interventions in the greater Middle East.
He did not do that. And so, given the reality maximum pressure has wrought, the administration’s chief duty is to refrain from making matters worse by pushing us into war. Diplomacy, if feasible, is always welcome, but avoiding war must now be our primary goal.
Bonnie Kristian is a fellow at Defense Priorities and contributing editor at The Week.
