The US dropped the ball on Iran. If Washington had come up with a comprehensive strategy to address Iran's destabilizing role in the Middle East, the growing conflict between Iran and its proxies on the one hand, and Israel and its allies on the other could have been prevented. Today's escalating conflict in the Middle East—April 13 saw Iran's first direct attack on Israel in history—is exacerbated by, among other things, more than a decade of inconsistent U.S. policy toward Iran. This is the result of shortsightedness and over-segmentation.
Since President Barack Obama's first administration, the U.S. government has focused almost exclusively on Iran's nuclear program, largely ignoring Iran's other activities, including its interventions throughout the region. President Obama had already promised during his first term campaign in 2008 to make the nuclear deal with Iran a top priority for the Middle East, and he worked to formally implement it after he took office. .
Early in the process, there was a clear imbalance between Washington's perception and that of the Iranian government. The US government believed that engaging Iran on nuclear issues would limit its potential to destabilize the region, and this assumption motivated the first nuclear deal with Iran in 2013. . However, Iran celebrated the deal as a political victory and otherwise continued. Nevertheless, the Obama administration pressed ahead with pursuing a broader nuclear deal and managed to secure the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015.
While the Obama administration was negotiating the deal, two important developments in Iran failed to provoke any reconsideration in Washington. The first was the Green Movement, a nationwide wave of protests against the rigged 2009 election that gave Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term. Iranian authorities suppressed the movement with extreme violence. In 2011, popular protests erupted in Syria as part of the Arab Spring. Iran quickly dispatched advisers to help Syrian President Bashar al-Assad quell the protests, turning a peaceful uprising into a long and bloody war that continues to this day.
During this time, Iran was also developing a ballistic missile program. However, none of these developments diverted the US government's focus from the objectives of the nuclear deal. Again, the US and Iranian perceptions were very different.
The US government's logic was that nuclear enrichment was the biggest threat Iran posed to the Middle East – and the US believed that cooperation on this issue in exchange for sanctions relief would build trust. Theorized. According to the US government, this trust will provide the basis for Iran to address other issues such as its missile program and intervention in the Middle East. This misplaced hope not only failed to account for Iran's political realities, but was also short-sighted in allowing Iran to expand both its missile program and its regional interventions.
This myopic obsession of the Obama era is being repeated today by the Biden administration, which similarly focuses on the nuclear deal while largely ignoring Iran's other destabilizing activities.
But even former President Donald Trump's administration did not deviate significantly from the path set by President Obama and now followed by President Joe Biden. In 2018, President Trump withdrew the United States from the JCPOA and announced the start of a so-called maximum pressure campaign against Iran. But even though Iran's activities in Syria are larger than they were during Obama's presidency, the Obama administration has not come up with any plans to address its ballistic missile program or intervention in the region.
Although Iran never fully complied with the terms of the JCPOA, the US withdrawal from the deal gave Tehran an opportunity to publicly criticize Washington and increased Iran's political capital among its supporters. And while President Trump used the phrase “maximum pressure” to describe his strategy against Iran, the reality is that the measures Washington took were not so maximal. These include the designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), a division of Iran's military, as a terrorist organization in 2019 and the imposition of additional sanctions in 2020 for the assassination of elite Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Suleimani. corresponds to
The Trump administration's actions did not modify Iran's behavior. On the contrary, Iran has become bolder. The terrorist designation did little to restrict the Revolutionary Guards' financial transactions, as they were not dependent on international banking networks. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's declaration that the United States implemented the designation at his “request” only served to confirm Iran's narrative that it was resisting victimization by its enemies. The Revolutionary Guards did not collapse after Soleimani's assassination, but continued their destabilizing activities. And while Iran was hurt economically by sanctions, it was not enough to change the regime's behavior.
Iran also benefited from the Trump administration's lukewarm response to attacks orchestrated by Iran and its proxies against U.S. targets in the Middle East. The U.S. government blamed Iran for the 2019 attack by Yemen's Houthis on a key Aramco oil facility in Saudi Arabia, but it has not instituted a strong policy against Yemen itself. That failure is now vividly unfolding in the context of the Israel-Hamas war.
In Tehran's eyes, the lack of political and military pushback led to Washington losing credibility. When Revolutionary Guard speedboats harassed US Navy ships in the Persian Gulf in 2020, the US chose not to respond. Later that year, the Trump administration unsuccessfully attempted to extend the UN arms embargo on Iran, which expired in October 2020. Instead, Washington ended up unilaterally imposing this embargo.
Iran saw this scenario as confirmation of U.S. diplomatic isolation. When the US government imposed further sanctions on Tehran in the same year, Iran's response was to increase its nuclear enrichment.
Iran also benefited from U.S. indifference to Iran's continued regional intervention that spanned the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations. This inattention allowed the Houthis to strengthen their position in Yemen, helped keep the Assad regime in power, and allowed Hezbollah to become the most powerful political actor in Lebanon. Other Iranian-backed Middle Eastern armed groups, including Hamas, also profited from this situation, obtaining more weapons, funding, and training from Iran.
After 15 years of half-hearted and short-sighted US policy toward Iran, it is no surprise that the Middle East is now at war. The fighting began on October 7, 2023, with the Iranian-backed militant group Hamas, and has escalated. The aggressiveness is, in no small part, the result of the failure of the US strategy against Iran.
Iran's apparent resilience is not simply a product of its own strength, but also largely the result of US strategic incompetence. In other words, U.S. actions have aided Iran's ability to act as a destabilizing force in the Middle East.
If there is a silver lining to events since October, it is that the conflict has shown Iran to be isolated and vulnerable. When Iran attacked Israel, Israel's Western allies and Arab partners actively supported Israel's defense. Iran lacks such a robust defense network, despite all its proxy networks.
This could be a great opportunity for the United States to change its response to Iran. The new strategy includes stronger engagement with Washington's regional allies to build a viable security framework for the Middle East, taking the lead in peace processes in Syria and Yemen, and addressing Iran's role. This should include reviving the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in a way that .
Unfortunately, there is still no indication that the United States is ready to develop a comprehensive Iran policy that seriously addresses Tehran's threat to regional stability. The United States' policy toward Iran mirrors its Syria policy, where the Obama administration's inaction had dire consequences.
As long as the United States maintains a similarly negative attitude toward Iran, the Middle East will continue to be shaken by Iran's destabilizing actions.