PerspectiveTrump Is Giving Iran More Than It Ever Dreamed of

For the past six months, there has been plenty of reason to believe that Iran has primarily been motivated by fear, even desperation, in its confrontation with the United States. Lately, however, there are signs that Tehran has shifted to a strategy driven instead by a sense of opportunity and advantage. Kenneth M. Pollack writes in Foreign Policy that the trigger for this shift has been the Trump administration, whose misguided approach to Iran is on the cusp of splitting the United States from its Sunni Arab allies—a monumental geostrategic victory that Tehran has sought for 40 years.

Pollack writes that initially, Iran’s attacks on Gulf oil exports were almost certainly driven by fear and anger over the impact of the reimposed U.S. sanctions, which are devastating Iran’s economy and inflicting real hardship on average Iranians. The regime, even its hard-line elements, probably feared this would generate public protests and other problems for it. Tehran’s attacks on Gulf oil exports were likely meant to drive up the price of oil (which would be good for Iran, bad for the United States) and to create a crisis that would energize other countries to demand that Washington ease off the pressure on Iran. Iran’s attacks on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries were initially intended as a form of indirect pressure on the United States to get it to alleviate, or even eliminate, the sanctions.

Pollack writes:

That Iranian strategy has failed miserably. While their attacks did create crises, only the recent strike on Abqaiq caused any significant jump in oil prices, and even that was probably less than the Iranians had hoped. Meanwhile, in part because the oil market has remained mostly placid, the Iranian strategy has had no impact on U.S. policy, either directly or indirectly by moving Arab, Asian, and European countries to persuade Washington to back off.

At the same time, however, the Iranian attacks have succeeded wildly in a way that Tehran probably never imagined. Because the United States has barely responded at all—only applying more fatuous sanctions and a single cyberattack that Iran seems to have shaken off—and because senior U.S. officials starting with the president have trumpeted that they will not employ force unless Iran attacks American citizens or property directly, the Iranian attacks have driven a lethal wedge between the United States and the GCC.

Although this has been part of a larger, longer process of the Sunni Arab states losing faith in their long-standing relationship with the United States, recent developments have had an outsized impact, dramatically accelerating that process. We may well have reached a tipping point, as Foreign Policy’s Steven A. Cook has insightfully argued.