With Donald Trump and the Republicans’ return, we can finally expect America to get tough on Iran again. It is important to learn from the successes of Trump’s Iran policy during his first term, as well as its shortcomings. Long story short: Sanctions are good, but not enough.
Iran poses three distinct threats to America: 1. Its nuclear program, 2. Its proxies, and 3. Its covert activities in America and among America’s allies and partners.
During Trump’s first term, he withdrew from Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. This allowed America to reimpose sanctions on Iran, including sanctions Obama never imposed, specifically oil sanctions and sanctions on Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and proxies like the Houthis.
These sanctions succeeded in limiting Iran’s financial power, demoralizing its security forces who were not being paid, and making life difficult for the regime. However, while the sanctions slowed down some of Iran’s activities, they didn’t stop them. Instead, they emboldened some of them even more.
Before Trump took office, Iran was enriching uranium at 3.7% and had under 300 kg of enriched uranium. After Trump started reimposing sanctions, Iran increased its stockpile. By the time Trump left office, Iran had 2,500 kg of enriched uranium and had started enriching at 20%. (Under Joe Biden, Iran enriched at 87%, which is military grade.)
After Trump was first elected, Iran ceased its attacks on U.S. forces and assets. However, after a couple of years, it began testing the waters and faced no resistance, so it started increasing its attacks.
In the summer of 2019, Trump decided to attack Iran after Iran downed an American drone. However, as U.S. fighters were in the air, he called off the attack. Reportedly, Tucker Carlson advised him against attacking Iran. This emboldened Iran to attack Americans even more. In the following months, American forces were being attacked even more frequently than under Obama.
Iran has also been attempting to kidnap and kill dissidents in other countries, including the United States, thereby undermining our rule of law. It has also been trying to assassinate American politicians like John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and, most notably, Trump himself. Sanctions have not stopped any of these actions.
There is something Trump did that tamed Iran: In January 2020, he killed Iran’s celebrity general Qassem Soleimani in Iraq. (One of the best things Trump did was kill someone with American blood on his hands.) Iran got the memo that it could no longer monkey around. For almost a year after that, there were no attacks against U.S. forces. Soleimani’s replacement was so scared that he didn’t leave Iran until Trump left office.
There are two lessons to learn: sanctions are useful in impoverishing Iran’s regime, but they are not enough. Military force is also very effective against Iran, and it will not start a war because Iran is too weak to fight back.
Now that Trump is about to become president again, he should remember a few things. First of all, in addition to being an enemy of America and Israel, Iran has also literally tried to kill him. Second, lifting sanctions and being nice to Iran, like Biden has been, doesn’t work because Iran only has two modes: being aggressive when we sanction them and being hyper-aggressive when we do not. Lastly, using force against Iran works, as Trump proved.
Iran is getting too close to a nuclear weapon to be comfortable. The only way to stop it—THE ONLY WAY—is by using military force. Israel doesn’t have the necessary capabilities, but America does. This leaves Trump with two options: He can either attack Iran himself, or he can give Israel the tools to get the job done. I prefer the latter.
Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Chuck Warren only and not his co-host Sam Stone or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.
