Australia / Israel Review

“If Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal, the United States would rejoin the agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations,” Joe Biden promised in a policy essay just weeks before winning the US presidential elections. 

While Biden recognises the threat of Iran’s nuclear program, his team’s animosity toward former secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s maximum pressure strategy risks snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Partisan naysayers who call ‘maximum pressure’ misguided and ineffective are wrong. Pompeo’s demands amounted to an end to Iranian terrorism, hostage-taking, illicit nuclear work, ballistic missile breakout, and destabilisations of neighbours. To suggest such demands are unrealistic is to normalise rogue behaviour.

The idea behind pressure is sound. Twice, pressure has reversed Iranian policies. In 1981, Ayatollah Khomeini released US hostages to relieve Iran’s isolation. Then, in 1988, Khomeini agreed to a ceasefire in the Iran-Iraq War. He likened that truce to drinking from “a chalice of poison,” but recognised regime survival required no less.

That Teheran ratcheted up nuclear work under former US president Donald Trump is true, but that does not mean pressure failed. Not all strategies neatly conform to the American political calendar. Iranian leaders burned through currency resources in the hope they could outlast Trump. In October 2020, the International Monetary Fund’s estimates of Iran’s available reserves were at US$8.8 billion [AUD$11.3 billion], a 90% decline from six months before.

Iran’s hard currency haemorrhage is evident throughout the region. In December, I visited Nabitiyeh in the heart of Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon. After Iranian paymasters had slashed Hezbollah salaries, they learned that perhaps only 10% of the group’s members joined for ideology; the rest simply had wanted the cash. The slaughter in Syria – Hezbollah admits to losing 4,000 fighters – and Iran’s inability to respond in kind to the assassination of its military and nuclear chiefs have tarnished its image further.

Iran gambled everything in order to survive Trump. Partisans may despise Trump, but Biden could use the legacy of Trump’s pressure to his advantage without abandoning his desire for diplomacy. The Obama Administration erred by offering Iran US$12 billion [AUD$15.4 billion] simply to come to the table. If Teheran’s reserves are nearing zero, Biden might simply slowball diplomacy.

Indeed, letting Iran’s hard currency reserves burn out may be the only way he can succeed. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, chief of the Revolutionary Guard’s Air Force, marked the first anniversary of Quds Force chief Gen.Qassem Soleimani’s death by drawing a redline around Iran’s missile program. Among the biggest faults of the 2015 nuclear deal was the failure of Western countries to understand that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps controls up to 40% of Iran’s economy. Rather than benefit ordinary Iranians, the regime channelled new investment disproportionately into hard-line coffers. To offer Iran relief upfront would allow the Guard Corps to insulate itself rather than incentivise cooperation. If regime survival is at stake, Khamenei might divert cash from Hajizadeh’s and Hezbollah’s slush funds into provisions for Iranians.

Biden could, however, put a progressive spin on his Iran policy. There is no reason why Democrats should support organised labour everywhere except inside Iran. The George W. Bush Administration missed its Lech Walesa moment when, in 2005, Iranian labour activists staged wildcat strikes to demand back wages and protest poor working conditions. 

Every dollar the Revolutionary Guard-owned companies are forced to pay workers is money unavailable to fund nuclear enrichment or build missiles. Rather than simply give the regime cash transfers, money could be better spent on strike funds and in integrating independent Iranian trade unions into international confederations.

Biden might also rally progressives and European Greens to empower Iranian environmentalists. Anyone who has ever visited Teheran witnesses what poor stewards the regime is of the environment. The 5,500-metre Mount Damavand lies less than 80 km from Teheran, but is visible only a few times each year because of Teheran’s thick smog. Rather than empower its environmentalists, the regime imprisons them. Simply put, the regime is both suspicious of any organisation that transcends class and politics and fears crossing the Revolutionary Guards, which own the worst polluting companies.

The Islamic Republic played the waiting game to survive Trump. Biden could return the favour to strip Iran of its nuclear ambitions. He might talk but without artificial urgency. And while his chief supporters might want to blunt sanctions, Biden might channel aid to the Iranians most oppressed by the regime rather than those who run it. To succeed, diplomacy should be both smart and bipartisan.

Dr. Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute specialising in Iran, Turkey, and the broader Middle East. He is author, co-author or editor of nine books on Middle East policy. Reprinted from Inside Sources (www.insidesources.com). © Michael Rubin, reprinted by permission of the author, all rights reserved.