Trump Nominee as UN Envoy Denounces Iran in Senate Confirmation Hearing

Stefanik spoke strongly against Iran. “Pushing back on Iran is a top priority,” she told the committee.

Elise Stefanik. (Photo: AFP)
Elise Stefanik. (Photo: AFP)

Jan 22, 2025

WASHINGTON DC, United States (Kurdistan 24) The Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) held a confirmation hearing on Tuesday to consider President Donald Trump’s nomination of Rep. Elise Stefanik (R, New York) as the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. 

Stefanik spoke strongly against Iran. “Pushing back on Iran is a top priority,” she told the committee.

The Iranian threat, as she described it, is two fold. One issue is iIran’s nuclear program, which she described as “the most significant threat to world peace.”

Asked how the U.S. should respond, she suggested that sanctions should be re-imposed on Iran—as did Sen. Marco Rubio in written testimony during his confirmation hearing to be Secretary of State. 

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The second respect in which Iran constitutes a significant threat is as a major state sponsor of terrorism. Iran, Stefanik said, funds Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis in Yemen. 

The Biden administration’s conciliatory approach to Iran, including the end of the sanctions threat, “emboldened Iran,” she said, and “led directly to October 7”—Hamas’s brutal cross-border attack on Israel that triggered the conflict which is still ongoing more than a year later.

Trump suggested much the same following his inauguration, as he explained how his policy had kept Iran in check.

”Israel would've never been hit on October 7," he said, “Iran was broke. Anybody that bought oil from Iran, you couldn't do business with us.”

“Everybody passed. China passed,” Trump continued. “They didn't have money for Hamas, and they didn't have money for Hezbollah.”

Indeed, that is basically how the U.S. used to understand terrorism—if it was big and had a major political effect, it was likely state-sponsored, a form of proxy war. However, that changed radically in the 1990s under Bill Clinton, who transformed the U.S. handling of terrorism.

Clinton changed how the U.S. saw, and dealt with, terrorism. From a national security issue, with the focus on determining state sponsorship, it became a law enforcement issue, with the focus on arresting and convicting individual perpetrators in a courtroom.

Read More: Militia Attacks Against US Forces Continue—But is Iran the Real Problem?

That caused the earlier focus on state sponsorship to fade, as the legal proceedings that dominated Clinton’s handling of terrorism dealt with the fate of individuals.

Sharp Reversal Now in U.S. Posture toward Iran—on Bipartisan Basis

In Stefanik’s confirmation hearing, every senator who asked her about Iran expressed a negative view of that country—both Republicans and Democrats, although the Republicans were somewhat harsher.

U.S. officials now understand that Iran is aligned with America’s enemies. The Republican senators spoke of an alliance among “China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran” (in that order), while the Democrats spoke of “China, Russia, and Iran.”

This is markedly different from the view that Democrats held In 2020, when the Biden administration took office. Then, led by the new administration, they believed that Trump’s departure from the Obama-era Iranian nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), had been a major cause of instability in the Middle East, as it created a lot of pressure on Iran.

Thus, the Biden administration adopted a conciliatory posture toward Iran in an effort to restore the JCPOA. Washington was fully backed in that effort by the European Union (EU), which shared the Democrats’ view. 

Of course, nothing came of that diplomatic effort. But it took two years before the Biden administration (and its EU partners) came to recognize that Iran was not interested in restoring the JCPOA. 

Read More: Joe Biden: Iranian nuclear deal is “dead”

But even that did not fundamentally change the Biden administration’s attitude toward Iran. As late as Sept. 29, 2023—just eight days before Hamas’s attack on Israel—National Security Advisor Jake Sulllivan told The Atlantic Festival, a two-day policy forum hosted by The Atlantic magazine, “The Middle East is quieter today than it has been in two decades.”

As The New York Times later wrote, “Jake Sullivan’s ‘Quieter’ Middle East Comments Did Not Age Well.”

But Avoiding War?

Thus it does seem that Trump’s policy toward Iran will be a lot tougher than Biden’s. However, Trump has made clear that he wants to avoid U.S. involvement in any more wars—including in the Middle East. That was also a point that Stefanik made in her Senate testimony. 

Indeed, the highly-regarded on-line magazine, Al-Monitor, which focuses on the Middle East, has suggested that Trump will likely avoid military action against Iran.  

Michael DiMino has been named as the Pentagon’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East. A former CIA military analyst, he has a long record of opposing U.S. military action in the Middle East.

Indeed, DiMino is a fellow at the think-tank Defense Priorities, which tends toward isolationism and favors an emphasis on fighting conventional wars, rather than engaging in counter-insurgency or counter-terrorism warfare.

However, DiMino’s views appear to be at odds with more senior Trump administration figures, who have already assumed their posts, including National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Read More: Mike Waltz, Good Friend of the Kurds, Named as Trump’s National Security Advisor

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How these two, quite different, perspectives will play out is unclear. It may be that the second Trump administration will show a strong preference for the use of economic and political forms of pressure over military action. But that all remains to be seen.