The Atlantic Council October 08 -2024 A bipartisan Iran strategy for the next US administration—and the next two decades

 The Atlantic Council 

October 08 -2024 

A bipartisan Iran strategy for the next US administration—and the next two decades

  

The United States needs a bipartisan strategy toward Iran that can be maintained across several administrations, one that works patiently and resolutely to counter Iran’s efforts to dominate the Middle East, drive the United States out, destroy Israel, and threaten Arab allies.

- Pressure to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and to halt its malign regional influence is crucial—but won’t work absent a strategic goal of new negotiations to address both challenges simultaneously.

- The United States must also counter Iran’s hostage taking, assassinations, and cyber and election meddling by triggering automatic penalties and responses in lockstep with allies.

 

Download the full strategy

 

The diagnosis

The wild swings in US policy toward Iran over the last decade have directly helped speed Iran’s malign influence in the Middle East and significant progress toward a nuclear weapon.

Iran is a deeply ideological regime unlikely to change its fundamental outlook on the world. But the geostrategic context has changed over the last two decades: Iran’s foreign ties are now so bolstered and buoyed, particularly by China, that isolating Tehran is far more difficult than ever before. These circumstances demand a bipartisan, long-term strategy that can span administrations.

The weapons, capabilities, and finances of Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iran’s other proxies have benefited from sanctions evasion and weak enforcement, allowing Tehran to funnel probably hundreds of millions of dollars to its proxy militias. Illicit oil sales to China have earned the regime around eighty billion dollars.

Iran has advanced close to the nuclear-weapon threshold and has come to believe it can defy international warnings regarding its nuclear activities with impunity. Since the United States withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal (aka the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) in 2018, Tehran has advanced its nuclear program, stockpiling uranium enriched to 60 percent, installing more advanced centrifuges, experimenting with uranium metals that could be used in making a bomb, and restricting International Atomic Energy Agency access to nuclear sites.

The prescription

Over the next two decades, the United States should pursue a long-term strategy with three main goals.

Reduce Iran’s influence in the region by strengthening weak states and countering Iran’s support to proxy militias.

 - What to do: Tighten sanctions enforcement, crack down on sanctions evasion by China, and go after third-party brokers—but keep sanctions sensitive to qualitative change in Iranian behavior and the effect on ordinary Iranians.

 - Shore up regional weak spots, pressing Middle Eastern and global allies to take the lead on diplomatic and economic efforts.

 - Continue pursuing Israeli-Saudi normalization.

 - Maintain an adequate US military presence in the region and be willing to respond with appropriate force to every attack by an Iranian proxy against US and allied interests.

 - What to say: Use public diplomacy to draw attention to the destructive impact that Iran’s proxies are having on the region, including in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, the Palestinian territories, and Syria.

Prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon

 - What to do: Recognize that attempting to revive the JCPOA is a dead end, and that “maximum pressure” cannot be the goal unto itself. Constantly relitigating both of them has impeded the development of new policy.

 - Increased pressure on the regime needs to be an immediate focus of US policy—but that pressure must be connected to a strategic end, namely new negotiations aimed at placing restrictions on its nuclear program that would leave Iran at least several months from a breakout capability and would concurrently address its regional malign influence.

 - Reimposing snapback sanctions and developing a credible military option against Iran’s nuclear program are important steps to increase pressure.

 - What to say: The United States needs to maintain a declaratory policy, explicitly enunciated by the president, that it will not tolerate Iran getting a nuclear weapon and will use military force to prevent this development if all other measures fail.

Where possible, support the aspirations of the Iranian people to have the freedom to choose the direction of their country’s future—without pursuing regime change through military action.

 - What to do: Choose policies that can be maintained for years, even though these might not have an immediately visible impact: increased funding for educational tools and access to independent media and voices, more Persian-language news.

 - Use the United States’ support for the Polish Solidarity movement and other anti-communist movements during the Cold War as a model.

 - On the human rights front, lead a multilateral effort to target regime officials and their family members who engage in or benefit from corruption, or who engage in human rights abuses. Work with international allies to oust Iran from United Nations institutions whose raison d’être Iran violates on a consistent basis.

 - What not to say: Anything about regime change, which could push Iran in the wrong direction. It has to be up to the Iranian people to decide for themselves the future direction of their country.

 - What to say: The United States and its allies need to publicize the corruption and behavior of regime officials in a way that highlights the disparity between leadership and common Iranians.

 

 

Davenport video

Kelsey Davenport, director for Nonproliferation Policy at the Arms Control Association and working group member of the Atlantic Council’s Iran Strategy Project, analyzes why preventing the Islamic Republic from developing nuclear weapons remains a critical US interest.

 

 

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