Joe Biden Breaks with Trump’s Strategy on Iran

After pulling his troops out of Afghanistan, President Joe Biden has expressed his intent to break with the campaign of “maximum pressure” against Iran. The Americans are looking for a way out of Iraq and Syria that only Iran can offer. An analysis from the founder and director of the Observatory of Arab Countries of Paris.

Since its creation 42 years ago, the Islamic Republic of Iran has not known a single moment of respite. After the triumphant arrival of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Tehran on a specially chartered Air France Boeing 747 on Feb. 1, 1979, the country was plunged into a purge of support for the imperial regime with unprecedented violence. The ambition of the new power was to export its revolution, spread its model and influence to other countries in the region, impose Islamic norms that break with Western influence, and dedicate itself to the fight against the United States and Israel.

After the hostage-taking at the American Embassy in Tehran in November 1979, ruptures with the international community followed in succession, and layer upon layer of sanctions and embargos of all kinds have befallen the “mullarchist” regime. The following year, Saddam Hussein attacked neighboring Iran. That war would last eight years and bring about enormous human and economic losses with no change to the borders negotiated in Algiers in 1975.

The confrontation between Tehran and Washington has, for its part, hit the economic and financial sectors, going even so far as to punish foreign companies that invest $40 million or more each year in Iran (pursuant to the 1996 Iran and Libya Sanctions Act, also called the D’Amato-Kennedy Law). The endless stream of American sanctions reached a peak with Donald Trump in 2018 and his “maximum pressure” campaign, which accompanied Washington’s withdrawal from the nuclear accord of 2015, approved by the Obama administration.

Despite the very constraining circumstances that can be likened to a blockade by a significant segment of the international community, the Islamic Republic has managed to weave a solid web, allowing it to exert its hegemony on the region. To that end, it has dedicated all of its energy and efforts to the pursuit of objectives that are inextricably linked, including the construction of a Shiite crossing from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean and the acquisition of a nuclear weapon.

To accomplish this, the regime has leaned on Arab Shiite communities and the defense of the Palestinian cause against the Hebrew state, an indispensable element in integrating Sunnis into the Iranian axis and pulling the rug from under the feet of America’s Arab allies. And it has done so at little cost compared to the colossal fortune that other powers in those very countries have invested in vain. The results are irrefutable: Tehran has taken the reins in Beirut; saved Bashar Assad, the soldier, its Syrian ally; quelled the drama in Iraq with its militias, now reviled by the population; and established its influence all the way to Yemen, where Houthi militias, guided by the Pasdarans and experts from Hezbollah and armed with Iranian drones and missiles, pester the Arabian Peninsula on a daily basis. An adviser to former Iranian President Hasan Rouhani has thusly been able to claim control of four Arab capitals — Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Sanaa — omitting Gaza in the process. Iranian support in the Palestinian enclave effectively allowed Hamas to shock Israel in May with the number and improved quality of its missiles, produced locally despite the double Israeli-Egyptian blockade.

The architect of this success was the general, Qassem Soleimani, commander of the al-Quds Force (Jerusalem force,* an indicator that Iran’s ambition is proportional to the ummah or community of the Islamic nation) leader of the Guardians of the Revolution, who was killed in American drone strike in January 2020. The Iranian approach depends on an ingenious mix of asymmetric warfare, intelligence, brutality and seduction. It consists of dismantling the institutions of existing states and sowing disorder and poverty, all the while creating de facto parallel authorities around its militias that progressively take over failing states and pledge allegiance to the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic.

With its Shiite networks, Tehran has endowed itself with a particular form of dissuasion that compensates for its lack of any air force worthy of its name. This line of defense rests on four pillars: cyberwarfare; intelligence (which has notably recruited Arab Shiite communities); missiles, which are cheap to produce; and above all, drones provided to its proxies that menace all of its neighbors.

The issue now for Iran is to sustain the fear it inspires by finally acquiring the bomb, which would insulate the regime along the lines of the North Korea model. This could be an opportune moment, as not only are all of the authorities in Tehran aligned with the Ayatollah, but with Biden, whose many negotiators used their skill to reach the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015 and who also appears ready to break with his predecessor’s “maximum pressure” campaign. The Arab monarchies from the Gulf seem to have already taken sides and are resigning themselves to the new order.

Israel, which has sworn to keep Iran from gaining access to a nuclear weapon, finds itself rather isolated. That does not impede it from occasionally scoring significant points. There is no longer a count of assassinated Iranian nuclear specialists, sabotaged nuclear installations, or vital centers which have been destroyed or put out of operation by Mossad. All of the archives of Tehran’s nuclear program have even been dispatched to Tel Aviv! But, despite that and sanctions, the Iranian program continues to progress in a broad context of American disengagement begun by Barack Obama and since maintained and amplified.

Having pulled out of Afghanistan in defeat, the Americans are, in fact, looking for a way out of Iraq and Syria that only Iran could offer them. The strategic vacuum that would be left by Washington is being called upon to be filled by regional powers. Iran has taken the lead over Turkey, but Israel is also exerting its pull on several states in the region. A nostalgic heir of the Soviet Union, Russia also dreams of filling the void, much like China, which assumes its geopolitical ambitions more and more openly these days.

But the rub for Iran is that its population, amid tension that has never eased in Iran’s 40 years, is beleaguered. Deprived of the rare resources of a country dedicated to regional expansionism, sorely repressed and deeply affected by COVID-19, the Iranian people have been sacrificed at the altar of the survival of the Islamic Republic. How much longer can this last?

One is right to question the durability of this battered regime, as it displays similarities with the end of the Soviet Union and the disconnect with its people. Despite remarkable resilience against the harshest sanctions and the consolidation of the disorder of Iran’s neighbors in a vital move to remake them in its image, it is legitimate to doubt the survival of the Islamic Republic in its present form when Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, now 82, dies. Already highly militarized, the regime could evolve toward a more classic security dictatorship built around a solid core of the Guardians of the Revolution, which has systematically seized the political and economic jewels of the crown.

*Editor’s note: Al-Quds is the most common name for Jerusalem in Arabic.