{"id":50118,"date":"2024-11-19T06:24:35","date_gmt":"2024-11-19T14:24:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=50118"},"modified":"2024-11-19T06:24:35","modified_gmt":"2024-11-19T14:24:35","slug":"iran-hawks-rule-the-roost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2024\/11\/19\/iran-hawks-rule-the-roost\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran Hawks Rule the Roost"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post<\/em> published an article<\/a> Saturday with a headline saying that Iran hawks would have \u201cless sway\u201d in the next Trump administration, and then the article says this:<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s election victory has meant that the GOP\u2019s traditionalist foreign policy hawks \u2014 for whom Iran has long been a top focus \u2014 are ascendant once again <\/strong>[bold mine-DL], as the party prepares to take control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives.<\/em><\/p>\n

To Tehran, the message from many of Trump\u2019s surrogates has taken the form of a broad warning. Gone, they say, is the Democrats\u2019 \u201cweak\u201d policy of appeasement. Prepare to be squeezed into submission.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t make sense to say that Iran hawks will have \u201cless sway\u201d in an administration that they completely dominate. The nominees for State<\/a> and Defense<\/a> are incorrigible, zealous Iran hawks, the National Security Advisor Mike Waltz<\/a> was already celebrating the \u201creturn of maximum pressure\u201d before Trump won, and the vice president-elect made a point of talking about<\/a> \u201cpunching\u201d the Iranians hard shortly after Trump selected him. Trump has been an Iran hawk all along, and he largely defined his Iran policy as a total repudiation of Obama\u2019s diplomatic engagement with their government. During the first Trump administration, there were a few advisers and Cabinet members telling Trump not to tear up the nuclear deal, but this time there will be no one to tell him that \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d is a dead end. I don\u2019t know why anyone would think that Iran hawks will have \u201cless clout this time around\u201d when they rule the roost.<\/p>\n

Everything we know<\/a> about the incoming administration\u2019s Iran policy tells us that it is going to be extremely hostile and focused on trying to strangle their government into submission. The Financial Times<\/em> reported<\/a> on Trump\u2019s plans on Saturday:<\/p>\n

Donald Trump\u2019s new administration will revive its \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d policy to \u201cbankrupt\u201d Iran\u2019s ability to fund regional proxies and develop nuclear weapons, according to people familiar with the transition.<\/em><\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s foreign policy team will seek to ratchet up sanctions on Tehran, including vital oil exports, as soon as the president-elect re-enters the White House in January, people familiar with the transition said.<\/em><\/p>\n

The \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d policy failed before, and it is not going to have more success this time. Because of Trump\u2019s pressure campaign, Iran\u2019s nuclear program expanded as a direct reaction to Trump\u2019s sanctions, U.S.-Iranian tensions skyrocketed, and American troops started coming under attack in Iraq and Syria. Then the U.S. and Iran nearly went to war after the Soleimani assassination. Trump\u2019s decision to renege on the nuclear deal was a colossal blunder, and the U.S. and the entire region have been living with the consequences since then. Thanks to Biden\u2019s foolish continuation of Trump\u2019s bankrupt Iran policy, Trump inherits the results of the mess he made.<\/p>\n

Broad sanctions can inflict significant damage on a target economy, but they cannot deliver the results that the sanctionists promise. When hawks say that sanctions \u201cwork,\u201d what they mean is that sanctions are destructive and impoverish lots of innocent people, but as far as extracting changes in the targeted state\u2019s policies they are useless and sometimes they cause more of the activities they are meant to stop. When a state has been targeted with broad sanctions as long and as intensely as Iran has, it learns how to adapt and survive under the strains of economic warfare. Trump and his allies imagine that they are going to force Iran to yield this time when their first attempt completely backfired. This is the definition of foreign policy insanity.<\/p>\n

While the second Trump administration is even more hawkish<\/em> than the first, it will have a harder time rallying other governments in the region to its side. There is not as much regional support for intensified economic warfare against Iran as there was six years ago. Iran has reestablished diplomatic relations with several neighbors, including the Saudis, and those neighbors are not as interested in ratcheting up regional tensions as they once were. The wars in Gaza and Lebanon have driven a deep wedge between Israel and Washington\u2019s Arab clients, so it will be more challenging for the U.S. to organize a regional anti-Iran coalition this time around. Even at the height of Trump\u2019s \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d campaign, there was plenty of sanctions-busting<\/a> going on in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and elsewhere, and there will likely be even more in the future.<\/p>\n

Read the rest of the article at Eunomia<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia<\/a>. He is former senior editor at<\/i> The American Conservative. He has been published in the<\/i> New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and<\/i> Culture11, and was a columnist for<\/i> The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post published an article Saturday with a headline saying that Iran hawks would have \u201cless sway\u201d in the next Trump administration, and then the article says this: Trump\u2019s election victory has meant that the GOP\u2019s traditionalist foreign policy hawks \u2014 for whom Iran has long been a top focus \u2014 are ascendant once […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-50118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"It doesn\u2019t make sense to say that Iran hawks will have \u201cless sway\u201d in an administration that they completely dominate."},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50118"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50124,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50118\/revisions\/50124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50118"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=50118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}