All Stick and No Carrot: Trump’s Policy towards Iran

On 13 October, 2017, President Trump unfurled his government’s policy towards Iran;
decertifying Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal and reversing his predecessor’s policy of
extending an olive branch to Iran, he indicated that the US is determined to push back against
Iran in the region.
Trump administration’s vehement hostility towards Iran nuclear deal is not simply because
the agreement limits Iran’s nuclear program for short term, but more importantly it has to do
with the fact that the deal bestowed upon Islamic Republic of Iran international legitimacy
and strengthened diplomatically and economically a regime whose very identity is based on
opposing the United States –Trump reminded his audience of the favourite Iranian slogan of
‘Death to America’ to bring this point home – and continues to pursue a regional geopolitical
strategy that runs counter to the American interests. Trump’s demonization of Iran’s clerical
regime as a rogue regime which ‘seized power’ in a revolution is a refusal to acknowledge
Iran as a legitimate, responsible member of international community – something that the
negotiated agreement of JCPOA achieved for Iran – instead once again construed Islamic
Republic as a threat and aggressor towards which the only strategy worth pursuing is that of
containment and punishment.
Islamic Republic of Iran first became the target of American sanctions in the wake American
Embassy hostage crisis. While pursuing anti-imperialist (read anti-American) geopolitics of
fostering resistance movements in the region –such as Lebanese Hezbollah in Lebanon,
Hamas in Gaza – revolutionary Iran invited the labels of ‘rouge’ regime and as part of the
‘axis of evil’ from Clinton and Bush administration respectively. However UN sanctions and
massive, unilateral American sanctions including secondary sanctions – targeted economic
pressure on companies in countries with ties to Iran by denying them access to the U.S.
market and financial system –intensified from early 2007 onwards when Iran refused to
suspend its nuclear enrichment program. Iran for its part has always refused to act under
pressure; on its nuclear file, it pursued a balanced policy of part cooperation and part
confrontation. While it was consistent in upholding its right to enrichment as a signatory of
NPT, but in order to rehabilitate itself to international community after more than three
decades of sanctions and isolation, Iran showed willingness for constructive dialogue with its
enemies and opponents in the West.
Now, President Trump’s decertification of Iran’s compliance with nuclear deal gives
Congress 90 days to decide if nuclear sanctions should be restored, while non-nuclear
sanctions have already been imposed targeting Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is
in charge of the Ballistic Missile program and also the international supply chain of the
missile program. More importantly, in portraying Iran as ‘world’s leading sponsor of
terrorism,’ ‘fanatical regime’ and ‘dictatorship’ not representing the great Iranian nation,
extolling the anti-government protests following the controversial presidential elections of
2009 as ‘Green Revolution’ and lamenting that the nuclear deal lifted sanctions just before

what would have been the total collapse of the regime, President Trump sent clear signals that
regime-change in Iran is back on the American agenda.
The clerical regime which draws its legitimacy by pursuing independence and justice driven
foreign policy of challenging the hegemonic power, the United States – referred to as global
arrogance by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – and developing an independent
sphere of influence by extending ideological, logistical and military support to regional
proxies from Afghanistan on the eastern border to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen in
the Middle East. The main driver behind Iran’s quest for an independent sphere of influence
as well as strategic depth –in Syria and Lebanon bordering Israel – has been the need to
address multiple insecurities originating from America’s long-standing pursuit of regime
change vis-à- vis Iran, the permanent American military presence in the Gulf, which deepened
further in the wake of unilateral military invasion of neighbouring Iraq and of course the
explicit and much repeated threats of American and Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Iranian pursuit of strategic influence in the region, though driven by defensive motives is
continuously portrayed as ‘aggressive’ and ‘destabilising’ by the United States and Gulf
monarchies paranoid about Iran’s ideological and geopolitical influence.
Trump administration’s push back strategy against Iran aims at empowering and expanding
the Arab club that can counter Iran’s ‘destabilising’ influence in the wider region from
Persian Gulf to Lebanon in Mediterranean Sea. US is playing a leading role in strengthening
cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Iraq hoping that the two former rivals will unite in
limiting Iran’s influence in post-ISIS Iraq. In another measure against Iran’s regional
partners, US House of Representatives voted for imposing new sanctions on any entities
found to support Hezbollah, which has been centrepiece of Iran’s regional geopolitical
strategy and has been fighting on the side of Syrian regime.
While Iran deal is a multilateral agreement which would survive as long as other signatories –
Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom and Germany – and Iran remain convinced about
benefits of the deal, but renewed American hostility towards Iran would contribute to an
ambience of insecurity in Iran, mobilising nationalist sentiment, politically emboldening
hardliners who consider the United States as an arrogant oppressive power and utilise the
ideological power of revolutionary Islam and oppressed nationalism in Iran’s factional
struggle for power. A geopolitically insecure Iran, by denouncing the US for its
untrustworthiness and arrogance, would seek to mobilise regional public opinion in its
favour, while keeping good relations with Russia, China and the EU to keep nuclear deal and
along with Iranian economy from sinking.

Deepika Saraswat

4th November 2017