Why No Thank You Note from Iran?

It really started when George W. Bush, ignoring his own father’s (former President George H.W. Bush’s) dire admonitions to the contrary, deposed Saddam Hussein as Iraq’s dictator. Adhering to Vice President Dick Cheney’s philosophical commitment to a powerful “unitary executive” in times of accelerating change and major upheaval, W agreed that only a major threat, a necessary war to save our nation, could reverse a post-Vietnam War congressional mandate to hem in a president from taking serious military steps without their approval. Fabricating non-existent threat of “weapons of mass destruction,” Bush-the-younger justified a war against Hussein just to get Congress to take off those post-Vietnam shackles. He succeeded. And we further destabilized the Middle East, and empowered modern Iran to take us on, for the foreseeable future.

You see, Hussein spoke for the 20% minority of Sunni Muslims in Iraq, containing the then-60% of Iraqis who were Shiites. Since the 1979 Revolution that installed a Shiite theocracy in neighboring Iran, Iran’s leaders assumed the role of religious authority (very import in Shiite doctrine where only religious leaders can interpret the Koran) for the entire Shiite faith. Effectively, with Hussein and his Sunni cronies gone, Iran used that sympathetic 60% Shiite Iraqi majority to take effective political control of Iraq through its puppet politicians. Al Qaeda and ISIS became the new spokesmen for the now disenfranchised Sunni minority in Iraq, noting that the new Shiite government in Baghdad was hell-bent on retaliating against Sunnis.

Iran’s power exploded in the region. Empowered by regional expansion, gloating over the clear stupidity of the U.S. hand-over of Iraq to their control, Iran determined to press further. Stinging from major losses in Iraq and Afghanistan, interminable combat, the United States seemed to withdraw from further regional military confrontation. Iran’s leadership was delighted. The only positive force that countered Iran’s aggressive movements and its efforts to develop nuclear weapons, was the six nation Iran nuclear accord (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA)… from which Donald Trump withdrew the United States back in May of this year.

Writing for the July 6^th The Cipher Brief, Kenneth M. Pollack, a Resident Scholar of the American Enterprise Institute (where he specializes in Middle Eastern political-military affairs, focusing particularly on Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf countries) explains: “Over the past decade, Iran has made tremendous gains across the Middle East by taking advantage of America’s disengagement and the instability of the Arab state system.  As a result, Iran today dominates the northern tier of the Arab world and plays a damaging role in Yemen, Bahrain, Afghanistan, and the Persian Gulf.

“The hard part is figuring how to do so, especially given that the American people are unlikely to want to pony up massive resources for such an effort and the United States is vulnerable to an Iranian counterattack in a variety of places.

“The Trump Administration has fully embraced the idea of pushing back on Iran, but it has focused almost exclusively on economic sanctions as the means of pushing back, and primarily on Iran’s nuclear program as the goal.  The problem with this approach is that Iran’s nuclear program is largely an enabler of the primary threat, which is Iran’s aggressive expansion into and destabilization of the Middle East.  The United States could remove the Iranian nuclear program from the Middle Eastern chessboard altogether and it would not eliminate the threat of Iran’s regional behavior or even slow it down, as we have seen since the passage of the JCPOA, which did effectively, that.  Sanctions on Iran could do tremendous damage to the already fragile Iranian economy, but even if those sanctions are largely respected by the rest of the international community, it is just not clear that Tehran’s hardliners will give in, or be overthrown.  Finally, pursuing a strategy in a way that the rest of the world finds odious, makes it far harder to get international support for halting or reversing Iran’s steady march across the Middle East…

“I remain conscious of the limitations on American power and the ability of Iran to retaliate in various ways and places.  Consequently, my proposed approach would shy away from confronting Iran in areas where it is stronger than we are, Lebanon first among them.  I advocate remaining in (or rejoining) the JCPOA because doing so would bolster our alliances with European and East Asian states whose help would be useful, if not necessary, in dealing with Iran’s inevitable responses.  Finally, I think it useful for the United States and its allies to begin to develop the capability to pursue regime change in Tehran by covert and cyber means.  However, I would hold it in check as a deterrent against an overreaction by Iran.  I would not try it out in the short-term or make regime change an immediate goal of the policy.  But as long as Tehran knows that the United States has been building a capacity to destabilize or even overturn the Islamic regime, it will likely moderate its own responses.”

The obvious difficulty with this approach, however reasonable it may sound, is that the United States really does not have many allies left to support its policy decisions. Trump has gone out of his way to antagonize, insult and even punish economically nations that have been our staunch supporters for decades, if not even a century or more. We are alone, a rogue state with much of the rest of the world circling their wagons against us. We have applied our “America First” doctrine to “ignore the rest.” What we should do, what we may want to do about Iran, just may have left the building.

Iran’s economy may be reeling. Its adventurous extra-territorial military efforts may be sapping their resources. But they can thank Donald J Trump for keeping Iran’s enemies confused, America’s allies seeking realignment against U.S. policies and his rhetoric so arrogant and alienating that America’s waning influence over the entire Middle East (except for Israel) is all but gone.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the list of countries that have been emboldened and more globally aggressive due to U.S. policies is growing long, most preeminently, China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.