A Trump Carrot-And-Stick For Iran? New Nuclear Talks, Crushing Sanctions

-Analysis-

Can we predict U.S. President-elect Donald J. Trump’s future foreign policy, notably its approach to that longstanding foreign-policy headache called the Islamic Republic of Iran?

Based on his first term in office, from 2016 to 2020, one can expect the return of an isolationist approach focused on his America First agenda, and broadly in line with the Republican worldview. The history of U.S. isolationism, or its reluctance to meddle in faraway disputes, began with the seventh president, Andrew Jackson, and today, in principle, places the economy and bread-and-butter issues above abstract principles that may cost you a war. The isolationist always prefers peace to noble interventions, but typically from a position of strength, which is the caveat that prevents this turning into craven appeasement!

The Trump administration‘s version may take a dual form of “offshore balancing” on the one hand — or seeking to fix problems remotely — and “selective engagement,” if push comes to shove. It will try and end the war in Ukraine as fast as possible and prevent war from spreading in the Middle East while vigorously backing Israel.

Under this administration, the Tehran regime can expect to be weakened significantly by new sanctions or forced to sign a deal that will in any case contribute to its regional, strategic and domestic decline and possible dissolution down the line in the new order some are predicting for the region. Should it continue its disruptive actions or “gray war strategy,” it will likely head the same way but faster and perhaps violently.

Foreign policy pillar

The state of the Middle East and Iran’s situation have changed since the first Trump administration. When Trump ditched the nuclear pact between Tehran and the Powers in May 2018, Iran was in a position of relative strength, enjoying “strategic depth,” to use its own term, in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. In following years and especially after 2020, it engaged in hit-and-run strikes on U.S. forces based in the region, intermittently harassed shipping in the Persian Gulf and the Hormuz strait and may have connived in the 2019 strike on an Aramco plant in Saudi Arabia. Its conduct was irksome and menacing, but tolerated.

Then came the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, the Tehran regime’s decision to help Russia, and Hamas’s October 7th attack, which provoked a fierce Israeli response that has taken the region to the brink of a big war. The Middle East now faces the “collapse of deterrence” or in plain terms, an inability by the West and the United States in particular to prevent all-out war. The U.S. needs to recover its deterrence capacity, if only to help stabilize a region that is distracting it from bigger challenges like China and Russia. For the Trump administration, the source of this degraded deterrence is in Tehran and to be addressed inside the framework of its foreign policy approach.

To that end, we may cite three foreign policy principles guiding the next administration in the Middle East.

Firstly, a strategic and crucial role for the Abraham Accords meant to normalize ties between Israel and the Arab world. Secondly, regaining the United States’ deterrent power through calculated and precise targeting of Iranian capabilities, which could even, initially, take the form of freely allowing Israel to strike Iranian targets. Given the level of understanding between Israel and the Trump administration, the United States would not even have to move troops to the region for now.

Thirdly, the return of maximum sanctions on Iran and threat of direct action should Tehran undertake hostile acts against U.S. forces, keep backing Russia in Ukraine and continue to subvert the region using proxy forces.

What will the Tehran Regime do?

The chief aim of exerting maximum pressures on Iran in the first Trump administration was not, in my opinion, to topple the regime. The administration wanted the Tehran regime to change its regional conduct and negotiate, then concede in all the key areas for the West, namely its military and nuclear programs but also its entire regional role. It failed to attain this objective for two reasons: the strike on the Revolutionary guards general Qasem Soleimani, ordered by President Trump, led Tehran to reject further talks, while Trump failed to be reelected in 2020. Possibly, had maximum pressures continued and with Tehran refusing to make concessions, the regime might have faced an economic breakdown, protests and even its overthrow.

Talking to the government that killed Soleimani will look like acute weakness.

The Trump team can now pick up where it left off, beginning with pressures intended to force talks, then Tehran’s climb-down on key fronts. In time, Tehran may find itself having to “drink the poison” of talks, as its late leader said of signing a ceasefire with Iraq in 1988, even if it presently fancies it can ride out another Trump term as it did the first one, resisting sanctions, further Israeli strikes and the possibility of more protests at home.

The regime has various considerations in any talks with the United States. First, talking to the government that killed Soleimani, one of the regime’s military icons, will look like acute weakness and fuel tensions if not severe discord inside the Iranian political class.

Second, Iran will be asked to make decisive concessions in the various dossiers, but can it afford to make them, just to be allowed to continue to exist in weakened form?

And third, Russia and Israel might obstruct talks in line with their own interests. Israel for example will pressure the United States to demand maximum, indeed crippling, concessions from Tehran in its nuclear program. Russia meanwhile has invested in a one-sided alliance with Tehran and will want assurances, if not concessions, should Iran strike some “grand bargain” with the West, especially following the death of the regime’s markedly russophile leader, Ali Khamenei.

What’s the Israeli strategy

In the short term, the Netanyahu government’s approach will depend on whether or not the Iranian regime will strike back at Israel, responding to Israel’s last strike (on Oct. 26, 2024), and how. If it strikes hard as threatened, then Israel will certainly strike back, even harder, perhaps hitting targets it promised the Biden administration it would avoid.

If Iran’s response is effectively symbolic, I believe the Israeli government will strike anyway, exploiting the fluidity and greater freedom of a transition period to the formal start of the Trump presidency. The tit-for-tat cycle with Iran must perhaps continue to its logical culmination, namely a decisive, conclusive action more likely to be taken by Israel than the Tehran regime.

Trump’s first term in office may give us an idea of what to expect with Iran.

Israeli strikes can only end at this juncture once it is certain the Islamic Republic is no longer capable of launching projectiles at Israel. Settling for anything less would be a strategic mistake. Immediate strikes may even serve to prevent a bigger war, leaving Iran much weaker if not helpless, at the onset of the Trump administration. That would ease the administration’s strategy in any case. The other option is for Israel to wait and if Iran does nothing of note, then to coordinate its actions with the next administration.

In conclusion: While it may be too early to affirm anything about Trump’s foreign policy, his first term in office but also his conduct and declarations, give us an idea of what to expect with Iran. He opposes costly wars that often lead nowhere, and prefers deals — but not any deal. To get the deal he wants from Tehran, we may be sure he will drive a hard bargain, squeezing Tehran while giving it a dose of its own proxy medicine — through Israel. Call it a bad cop, worse cop act.

The Tehran regime wasn’t expecting an easy ride with Trump, but it may soon face an existential challenge not seen since the Iraqi invasion of 1980.