Why No Sense of Urgency On Iran?

Well, almost a week has gone by, and Donald Trump hasn’t tweeted about Iran again. More important, his administration has done almost nothing. The “appropriate time” has been sliding into the distance, and we have failed to seize a golden opportunity to further our interests and the cause of freedom in the Middle East.

Indeed, Secretary of Defense James Mattis seems to be proud to neglect that opportunity. He said last Friday, “I just don’t think the protests will have any influence over my advice to the president one way or another” on sanctions. One supposes he was trying to separate, for the sake of clarity, the nuclear deal and its sanctions from other non-nuclear sanctions—but that very effort is a mistake. It precludes having an overall Iran strategy that seizes on the occasion of the protests to help the people of Iran and weaken the regime.

It is true that there are complex decisions pending on certifying or decertifying the nuclear deal and on waiving or not waiving various nuclear sanctions. But uncertainty about what to do about those is no reason not at least to begin to move on other fronts. There are many non-nuclear sanctions that can be imposed on the Revolutionary Guard, the Central Bank, and other elements of the regime; there are ways to highlight the protesters’ complaints about widespread corruption and the appropriation of wealth by various leaders; there are other ways to help the protesters. The administration has shown no urgency about moving ahead in any of these areas.

Secretary of State Tillerson recently tried to assure us that action will be coming soon. But time is of the essence. The demonstrators could use some concrete gestures of support. We are fiddling while the regime cracks down. The time to act is now.