Maximum Pressure?

I’ve always thought “maximum pressure” was inappropriate branding for a foreign policy campaign that isolates the United States from its allies. Wouldn’t maximum pressure look like the international community firmly united in its approach to preventing a nuclear Iran?  Maximum pressure, so-called, has rendered very little in the way of meaningful results. Economic sanctions have been devastating to the average Iranian but haven’t changed the behavior of the regime. Iran has continued to stockpile enriched uranium and repress its citizens while the U.S. has been left isolated at the UN and other international fora.

This WaPo article is an interesting look at U.S. sanctions toward Iran through a historical lens. It cites numerous examples of the United States imposing economic sanctions in the Middle East to limited effect. It recalls economic sanctions on Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gaddafi that succeeded in constraining their nuclear ambitions but failed to result in regime change or a loosening of their grip on power. Similarly, sanctions imposed on Syria in 2011 have devastated the local economy but have not resulted in the ouster of dictator Bashar al Assad. In each of these cases, authoritarian rulers have been unwilling to give up power in exchange for economic relief for their people – the central logic underlying the imposition of economic sanctions. In a similar vein, the article describes the January 2020 attack on Qassim Soleimani as an impressive show of muscle, but an action that has done nothing to change the behavior of the Iranian regime and has only made U.S. troops in the Middle East more unsafe and vulnerable to attack.

Having lived in southern Iraq in 2015-16 on the heels on the signing of the JCPOA, I can attest that an opening of dialogue between the United States and Iran did result in a more permissive security environment for U.S. personnel living, working, and interacting with Iraqis in the country’s Shia heartland (basically in Iran’s backyard). By contrast, the U.S consulate in southern Iraq was recently closed in 2018  – due in part to a deteriorating security environment and threats emanating from Iranian-backed Shia militias. I wonder what might have been if the U.S. had remained in the JCPOA. The U.S. might still be flying a flag in Basra today.  In its absence, others will surely fill the gap.