There’s promise and danger in President Trump’s tough new tone on Iran.
On Wednesday, National Security Adviser Michael Flynn popped up during the daily White House briefing and delivered a somewhat cryptic message: “As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice.”
Afterward, when three administration officials briefed reporters on Flynn’s warning, they declined to specify what the warning meant. On Thursday, the White House announced new sanctions on eight terrorist-related and 17 missile-activity-related Iranian entities, Reuters reported.
Flynn’s warning came before new Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was sworn in. He’s still without a deputy. New Defense Department officials are struggling to locate the bathrooms at the Pentagon. I’m told the Middle East desk at Flynn’s own White House shop is just starting to fully staff up.
The danger, therefore, is that an ill-prepared administration is making idle warnings. President Obama illustrated the folly of such actions with his infamous “red line” that never materialized, thereby escalating the deadly Syrian war.
But unlike Obama, Trump isn’t wedded to the nuclear deal, and so will be less willing to look the other way on Iranian violations.
Since the deal was struck in 2015, Iran has made a habit of pushing the envelope of its terms. Tehran armed, trained and financed unsavory allies like Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Houthis of Yemen.
And it launched at least 12 ballistic missiles, despite a UN Security Council resolution that “called upon” the mullahs to refrain from testing nuclear-capable missiles.
Iran never actually signed the deal, and Obama didn’t bother getting Senate buy-in by making it a treaty. So Security Council Resolution 2331, passed unanimously shortly after the deal was completed, is its only legally binding document.
Yet the mullahs scoff at the resolution, including, notably, its polite request to halt missile testing. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said this week Tehran is fully within its rights to test “defensive” missiles. Other officials have grudgingly said they must follow the deal but don’t give much weight to the UN resolution.
Oh, and the missile Iran tested Sunday was far from merely defensive. It’s modeled after a Russian KH55, designed to carry a small nuclear payload. The Iran deal, supposedly meant to prevent arming Iran with atomic bombs, overlooked delivery methods, addressing them in the UN resolution instead.
So missile launches have been up till now handled by the Security Council’s sanctions committee, where Russia made sure nothing with any teeth got through.
The mullahs got away with too much for too long.
Putting Iran “on notice” is done by Trump’s favorite mode of operation: unpredictability. “Nothing is off the table,” Trump said Thursday when asked about a military option on Iran.
Unpredictability may be dangerous but also has its advantages: Since November, Iranian militants mostly stopped harassing US ships in the Persian Gulf — where Revolutionary Guard boats occasionally buzzed US Navy assets, narrowly avoiding sparking a wider military confrontation.
Beefing up the American military presence in the Gulf, including a display of US arms that can hit nuclear facilities and missile factories, would further boost Flynn’s “notice.”
So would new sanctions. Obama scoffed at them, warning such measures could undo the nuke deal. Now, “after years of unilateral concessions and flexibility by the previous administration, it’s time for the United States to push back,” Sen. Marco Rubio said this week.
Along with two other colleagues, he introduced a new legislation mostly targeting Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps — sanctioning them and tracking their affiliated companies, which go to lengths to disguise their affiliation with the Guard.
Will such measures collapse the Iran deal, and then lead to war, as some warn?
“If Trump is resolute and serious, the Iranians will fold,” predicts the Israeli Farsi-language broadcaster Menashe Amir. Once the mullahs realize American sanctions and military threats endanger the regime’s survival, which is their top concern, they’ll keep their end of Obama’s bargain, he says.
So yes, Trump is yet to show he’s capable of designing an effective, not to mention nuanced, policy. But his chaotic style is reaping some benefits, and may yet produce even more. If smartly followed through, who knows — it may even make Obama’s Iran deal great again.
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