Trump cannot plague Iran, but he can prevent another war in the Middle East

• The Iranian government shows no sign of cracking under the pressure the Trump administration has applied to it.
• Despite the deterioration in relations, pragmatic negotiations can still allow the two sides to prevent war and can open up space for both to strive for a better deal, writes Daniel R. DePetris, defense priorities.
• This is an opinion column. The expressed thoughts are those of the author.
• Visit the Business Insider website for more stories.

Ever since President Donald Trump announced that the US has withdrawn from Iran’s nuclear deal, Washington’s Islamic Republic policy has been best summed up by a taunt of a schoolyard: Give me your lunch money.

The embarrassing defeat of the Trump administration at the UN Security Council this month and its attempt to snap back all UN sanctions on Tehran – despite opposition from even close US partners – is indicative of a failed approach that makes the confrontation between the US and Iran more likely becomes.

Over the past two years, the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign has been a one-dimensional game of economic sanctions and threats of diplomatic isolation. Drawn up by former National Security Adviser John Bolton and fully supported by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the strategy is designed to produce such economic pain in Iran itself that Chief Ali Khamenei is hesitantly returning to the negotiating table.

Weeks after the administration left the nuclear deal, Pompeo used a speech to outline what the US was looking for – no uranium enrichment on Iranian soil; the end of Iran’s ballistic missile production; an end to Tehran’s support for regional powers; and the withdrawal of all Iranian troops from Syria. The message to Iran: Nothing less than complete and unconditional capitulation would be acceptable.

Kyodo News via Getty Images

Unfortunately, Iran has shown no interest in uprooting decades of foreign policy. This is not surprising, as Iranian leaders across the ideological spectrum have categorized American demands as related to regime change.

Despite some of the heaviest economic sanctions the U.S. has ever imposed on a country in history (Iranian President Hassan Rouhani himself said sanctions have cost Iran $ 200 billion in revenue), Tehran continues to resist the maximum pressure campaign of Washington by overcoming the limits of the nuclear. deal with and become more aggressive in how it uses its military power in the region.

If the goal of maximum pressure was to create such economic unrest in Iran that its leaders simply waved the white flag, the strategy has miraculously failed. According to the latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran’s supply of enriched uranium has increased more than five times since the administration left the nuclear deal.

Washington’s Iran policy is a business life of what happens when unrealistic expectations and wrong assumptions dominate US foreign policy. Too often, the result is the calcification of problems that U.S. officials hope to solve.

It is worth noting that there have been several times during Trump’s term when the president himself expressed interest in high-stakes diplomacy with Iran. Nearly a year ago, on the sidelines of the annual UN General Assembly, Trump and Rouhani were a phone call away from breaking the cycle of escalation and entering into a dialogue – one that could produce a more lasting agreement.

Partly through domestic Iranian politics, Rouhani withdrew from the regime at the last minute. But the very fact that the two presidents spoke, even through an intermediary, suggested that the US and Iran could still sit down and negotiate a settlement that was good enough for both parties.

Reuters

Diplomacy is a key ingredient of statecraft. But if diplomacy is pushed aside as secondary or treated as a concession in its own right, then the chance of reaching an agreement decreases exponentially.

Instead of working on an agreement that is good enough for American interests, the administration has doubled down on an all-sticks, no-rooting approach against Tehran that simply does not work. The story will likely be the same, how many Iranian oil ships occupy the US or how much sabotage is deployed.

There is only one plausible option to salvage this situation: The US must correct its past mistakes and re-emphasize the diplomatic trail.

Such a decision will be difficult for the current administration to swallow. Critics have used legitimate complaints about Iran’s deal, such as the sun’s provisions on certain Iranian nuclear activities, to completely discredit the diplomatic option.

But the stupid truth is that no diplomatic agreement is perfect. If U.S. negotiators stood on the perfect footing in their years-long negotiations with Iran, it is conceivable that no agreement would have been signed in the first place.

Thomson Reuters

Diplomacy has succeeded in giving the outside world unusual access to Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran had refused years earlier. IAEA inspectors are now empowered to monitor Tehran’s technical compliance with the agreement at any time. More importantly, negotiations prompt the US and Iran to launch an off-ramp to what could very well have been a military confrontation that no country wanted.

By recalibrating to unintended diplomacy and shifting to more realistic goals, the US can eliminate a source of potential conflicts with Iran, a medium-sized power already controlled by its regional neighbors.

Building trust or reaching an agreement would be time consuming and vulnerable to division. But non-diplomatic options have proven to be ineffective in the long run, convincing the Iranian government that talking to Washington is a trick.

A measure of trust and decorum needs to be re-established between Washington and Tehran. Small, calibrated actions such as relief from US sanctions should be coordinated with small Iranian concessions over the nuclear program. Maximalism must make room for compromise.

With relations between the US and Iran in such bad shape, the primary goal is to prevent another war in the Middle East. Pragmatic negotiations are the most effective way to succeed in that endeavor. Over time, space may open up for both powers to explore a more important deal across a wider range of disputes.

Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a columnist at the Washington Examiner.