Opinion: Trump won't accept these harsh realities on Iran by aarondmiller2 and Richard Sokolsky
Aaron David Miller is a distinguished scholar at the Wilson Center and a former adviser to six secretaries of state. Richard Sokolsky is a nonresident senior fellow in Carnegie's Russia and Eurasia Program.All administrations — and together we worked for seven — have their blind spots and illusions on foreign policy and national security. But the Trump administration seems particularly divorced from reality, especially with its otherworldly view of the current US-Iran crisis.
Make no mistake: The US and Iran were at odds long before Trump walked out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal last year. Iran flagrantly abuses human rights. It is a repressive, authoritarian, and ideologically extreme regime thatIt is a state sponsor of terror that trades in anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, and Holocaust denial. And the regime in Tehran also seeks to spread its influence in four Arab capitals — Beirut, Damascus, Sanaa, and Baghdad — where its fellow Shia reside.
Moreover, the president's hardline advisers, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton, hope to use maximum pressure either to provoke Iran to take actions that would provide a pretext for US military strikes, or to bring about the collapse of the regime. Third, one gets the feeling that much of the administration's Iran policy is driven by domestic politics and presidential ego rather than the national interest. When it comes to human-rights abuses, Iran is no worse than North Korea, also a state sponsor of terror and a more direct threat to US security because, unlike Iran, it already possesses deliverable nuclear weapons.
Tehran and Washington are engaged in a long-term struggle for influence and power. This isn't the first crisis, and it won't be the last. Iran is in desperate need of economic relief, but the administration is unwilling and the Europeans unable to provide it. Trump says he does not want a war with Iran, and the regime clearly doesn't want to court one.
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