IRAN POLICYAmerica’s Iran Policy Is a Failure − Piecemeal Deterrence and Sanctions Can Go Only So Far
A decade of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East has failed to contain Iran’s ambitions and has instead substantially contributed to the current escalation of hostilities in the region. Washington’s ability to project power and manage American interests in the Mideast has eroded dramatically since 2010, and, as a result of Trump’s 2018 withdrawal from the nuclear deal, Iran’s military nuclear program has reached its most advanced stage. The failed policies have culminated in the collapse of American deterrence in the Middle East. Simply put, the U.S. no longer projects enough power there to stop Iranian hostilities.
The escalating conflict between Israel and Iran in recent months is frequently explained as another extension of Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza. After all, Hamas enjoys a close relationship with Iran, and both share the goal of eliminating the Jewish state.
But there’s more to it than that.
As a scholar of security studies who has researched conflicts in the Middle East for over 20 years, I would argue that a decade of U.S. foreign policy in the region has failed to contain Iran’s ambitions and has instead substantially contributed to the current escalation.
As is clear from recent events along Israel’s northern border, Washington’s ability to project power and manage American interests in the Mideast has eroded so dramatically since 2010 that Iran has only limited concerns about the consequences of its proxies attacking U.S. forces and directly attacking U.S. allies such as Israel.
Iranian Victories
The government of Iran, a Shia Muslim nation in a Sunni Muslim region, expands its regional influence by funding and militarily supporting violent proxy organizations in neighboring countries. Those groups, in turn, attack and destabilize those nations.
Over the past decade, this canny strategy has turned Iran arguably into the Mideast’s most influential superpower.
Until the early 2010s, Iran’s only real foothold in the region was Hezbollah, the Shia political and military group it fostered in Lebanon in the early 1980s. Today, Iran’s alliances include the Houthi rebels in Yemen and a loyal network of Shia militias in Iraq. In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad has allowed Iran’s elite fighting force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, to build a massive military presence.
Since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas invaded Israel, triggering the Gaza war, these groups have directly attacked Israel, American military bases and U.S. civilian assets in the region over 170 times. The political and military sovereignty of Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Iraq has so eroded that some American officials consider them Iran’s puppet regimes.
Over the same period, Iran’s military nuclear program has reached its most advanced stage. In July 2024, six years after the Trump administration backed out of the international nuclear deal meant to slow the development of Iranian weapons, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that Iran was weeks from being able to equip its vast and growing arsenal of ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads.