Experts: No coherent US strategy on Iran beyond sanctions

WASHINGTON DC (Kurdistan 24) The consensual view of an expert panel at the Hudson Institute on Wednesday was that the new US policy toward Iran—embodied in President Donald Trump’s renunciation of the Iran nuclear deal—lacks strategic coherence.

Panelists divided on whether they thought the move was a good idea or not. Some argued that the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), as the nuclear deal is formally known, would have allowed Iran to build a nuclear bomb, so nothing is lost in leaving it, and doing so is a significant counter to Iranian aggression.

Others argued that the JCPOA served some good in limiting Iran’s nuclear program. It represented an international treaty, and it would have been better to “fix” the agreement, rather than abandon it altogether.

But individuals on both sides of the debate concurred in the view that leaving the nuclear deal and reimposing sanctions will not, in itself, change Iranian policy. 

To be sure, Iran is already starting to suffer economically from the new US policy. Its currency is in “free-fall,” Richard Goldberg, a Senior Advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), stated. 

He predicted that Iran would soon face an “extreme liquidity crisis,” along with a “balance of payments crisis.”

However, “sanctions alone won’t be sufficient” to change Iranian policy.

Behnam Ben Talebu, a Research Fellow at FDD argued. A coherent strategy would also involve diplomacy, intelligence, and the military, which, are, so far, lacking in the US approach.

Indeed,“what is US strategy?," Ben Talebu asked. “Is it simply to collapse the rial? Is it to facilitate regime change?” Or “is it to get Iran to come to us and propose a better [nuclear] deal?”

No one had an answer.

Dr. Michael Doran, who served in the White House as a senior director on the Middle East during George W. Bush’s presidency and who is now a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, explained that the Obama administration had accepted Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon as Iranian “spheres of influence.” For all its rhetoric to the contrary, the Trump administration has basically “continued” Obama’s approach, Doran explained.

That was also the view of Michael Pregent an Iraq expert at the Hudson Institute, who served as an advisor to General David Petraeus and his successor in Iraq, Gen. Raymond Odierno.

“We have no counter-Iran strategy in Iraq and Syria,” Pregent complained.

Pregent tended to blame the US military and, specifically, the highly influential Secretary of Defense, Jim Mattis, who is taking a far more cautious stance toward Iran than he did earlier, as CENTCOM commander.

“I want ‘Mad Dog’ back,” Pregent bemoaned. (“Mad Dog” is a nickname given Mattis for his tough stance as a commander in Iraq and Afghanistan.)

Doran, however, suggested that the problem was much broader, rooted in the failure of successive US presidents to develop clear and coherent objectives for the post 9/11 conflicts.

“The US military looks at the last 17 years,” Doran said, and “sees the civilian leadership, from both parties, coming with grand solutions for the Middle East at huge expense of blood and treasure.”

“Nobody has paid a higher price than the military,” Doran continued, “with very little to show for it.”

That is also Trump’s view, as Doran noted. So there is a “tendency to say don’t come to me with your new solution for the Middle East that’s going to involve even a small sacrifice for our boys.”

Still, in the end, Doran basically agreed with Pregent. Though there were “very understandable, justifiable reasons” for the caution of the US military, “that caution will not allow us to achieve the goals that everybody says we want to achieve.”

The panelists warned that as tensions rise between Washington and Tehran, Iran would likely threaten US forces in Iraq and Syria. So Kurdistan 24 asked if it made sense to relocate those troops to the Kurdistan Region.

“If there is a one-Iraq policy,” Pregent replied, and everybody says that “Iraq is one country, then it shouldn’t be controversial to move the US Train and Equip program to Erbil.”

All the Shiite political parties in Baghdad, whether moderate or extremist, are asking for an “invisible” US footprint, Pregent continued. So “move it to Erbil, where it will be out of [their] sight.” 

The US should also “build a Sunni Arab and Sunni Kurdish force” there that can go after the Islamic State, “because it has not been defeated,” while denying “ a permissive environment for IRGC-Quds Force militias in the north.”

Still, the idea was “controversial,” Pregent acknowledged, although “I don’t know why.”

Pregent also warned of a big and looming problem. “Every” Shiite party has said that it wants the US to leave. However, if the US were to leave, it would mean the reemergence of IS!

But there is an easy and ready solution. Let the US, and the broader anti-IS coalition, recognize the full authority of the autonomous Kurdistan Region to provide for its own defense. Then accept its invitation to base Coalition forces in a place where they will actually be welcome!