Trump's Iran Strategy Lacks a Regional Outlook

Saad Alsubaie

Security, Middle East

Disengaging and minimizing the U.S. role in the Middle East will only contribute to conditions that increased the Iranian geopolitical expansion in the first place.

Since President Donald Trump took office in 2017, the most consistent theme of his foreign policy has been his tough stance toward Iran. In a fundamental shift from his predecessor, President Trump terminated the Iran nuclear deal and replaced it with the Iran strategy. The first core element of this strategy “focuses on neutralizing the Government of Iran’s destabilizing influence and constraining its aggression.” In a speech outlining the new U.S. strategy on Iran, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo explained that the Iranian regime had used the money from the nuclear deal to fuel “proxy wars across the Middle East.” To confront Iran, Secretary Pompeo stated that the United States would exert “unprecedented financial pressure on the Iranian regime.” Although financial pressure is essential to thwart Iran’s ability to support terrorism, it is not, by itself, a comprehensive strategy to roll back Iran from Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon.

Today, Iran’s malign activities go beyond covert financial support to some underground terrorist groups. Iran is already entrenched in Iraq and Syria, fighting a proxy war in Yemen, and arming and training Shiite militias in Lebanon and other parts of the region. Iran’s evolving threat cannot be dealt with in isolation from two important factors: the nature of Iranian geo-ideological thinking and the regional security context within which it expands. To comprehend the Iranian expansionist behavior, one must first understand the Iranian ideological rationale for expansion.

Since the revolution in 1979, the Iranian regime has believed that exporting its politico-religious revolution is essential for its survival. In its calculations, economic growth and national prosperity are subordinate to ideological expansion. Thus, it is misleading to assume that the Iranian regime will respond to economic sanctions in a rational manner. The fact that Iran has been able to expand its influence and build a nuclear program, despite the economic sanctions imposed since 1979, gives an indication of its main priorities as well as its behavior under such sanctions.