When it comes to US Iran policy, simple yet profound realities merit repeating. One of these is that economic sanctions are a tactic, not a strategy. Indeed, unless linked to a clear and feasible goal, they are unlikely to produce the intended outcome. This lesson is likely to become abundantly clear if, as has been widely reported, Brian Hook—who helped to design and implement the “maximum pressure” policy during the first Trump administration—takes on a leading role defining Iran policy in Trump’s second. What is telling is that while Hook promised to revive and extend sanctions on Iran, neither he nor any individuals slated for national security positions have clearly stated the ultimate goal of maximum pressure.
It is not enough to say that the purpose of sanctions is to contain the capacity of Iran and its regional allies to threaten its enemies, or to force Tehran to accept a new deal on the nuclear issue and other points of US-Iran contention. By itself, containment in all of its economic and military forms will not limit Iran’s accelerating enrichment program. As for a deal, it will require a compromise on the key issue, namely Iran’s ability to sustain even a small but highly supervised enrichment program in return for a reduction of nuclear-related economic sanctions. Since this was precisely the kind of bargain that led the Trump White House to abandon the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018, it is hard to imagine that a second Trump administration will embrace a deal whose provisions the incoming president utterly rejects.
This disjuncture between tactics and strategy is not bad news for Iran. On the contrary, its leaders could exploit the new administration’s resistance to defining a coherent strategy in order to protect the regime and sustain Tehran’s regional influence. For the Islamic Republic, a return in Washington to magical thinking represents an opportunity, but also a potentially significant headache for the new Trump administration. No one can predict how it will deal with that headache, but much will depend on Trump’s erratic temperament, and on the evolving debate in the new administration as it tries to figure out if it can rework a policy that proved so ineffective during Trump’s first tour of duty as President and Commander in Chief.
Hook’s Murky Legacy and Early Departure
Following reports of his appointment as lead Iran advisor, Hook boasted that a return to “maximum pressure” will now follow President Joe Biden’s “policy of appeasement and accommodation with Iran.” But this assertion not only unfairly misrepresents Biden’s Iran policy; it comes from a former Trump administration official who in August 2020 actually quit his position as the president’s point man on Iran. Hook’s departure—and thus distancing—from a policy that he helped to create offers a cautionary tale for anyone looking for a coherent Iran strategy from the very man who will once again take charge of Iran policy under his new (and former) boss.
The imposition of more sanctions did not force Iran to back away from its enrichment program.
Indeed, just one day before Hook resigned in 2020, he insisted that the White House’s “theory of the case” was that “economic pressure, diplomatic isolation and a credible threat of military force” would compel Iran to return to talks. But there was no evidence to support the theory; on the contrary, as a former (and thus not disinterested) administration official noted, “Iran is breaking the limits on enrichment, storage and developing a delivery system,” while it had “significantly increased its bad actions.” Indeed, the actual record disconfirmed the theory that more economic or military pressure would compel Iran’s capitulation on the nuclear issue. Indeed, the imposition of more sanctions played a major part in severely reducing Iran’s oil exports, but it did not force it to back away from its enrichment program or stop supporting its regional allies. By March 2021, “maximum pressure” was widely seen as a failure by all serious Iran watchers.
Hook and Company Never Understood Iran
It is no exaggeration to state that Hook and his colleagues never understood the Islamic Republic. There are at least three reasons for this failure.
First, the Trump administration’s top policy makers misunderstood the strategic and ideological impulse animating Iran’s leaders. Far from forcing Iran’s capitulation—or even a major “change in behavior”—putting a gun to the heads of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his allies reinforced their commitment to a no war but no peace “resistance” strategy. This stance was hardened by the Iranian perception that Trump did not want to go to war with Iran despite all his threats and bravado, and despite the fact that the “Iran Action Group” that was formed in August 2018 under Hook’s leadership was probably made up of hardline Iran analysts, many of whom in all likelihood supported a policy of regime change over any serious diplomatic effort involving compromise.
Second, Hook and his advisors believed that any new deal should be expanded to include the full array of issues dividing Washington and Tehran, including Iran’s “malign” behavior in the Middle East and its expanding ballistic missile program. Hook may have been right, at least in the abstract: reducing sanctions to secure agreement on the nuclear issue could undercut US negotiating leverage on all the other issues. But the assumption that Iran’s leaders would agree to a “grand bargain” that required major concessions on all issues vital to the Islamic Republic’s security such as its support for Hezbollah was totally unrealistic. It is not unlikely that Hook and his advisors insisted on such a bargain precisely because they knew that Iran’s leaders would reject it. These advisors included the director of the Iran Action Group, Len Khodorkovsky, a Ukrainian-American State Department official who lacked any significant experience studying or analyzing Iran.
The assumption that Iran’s leaders would agree to a “grand bargain” that required major concessions was unrealistic.
Third, Hook rejected any deal that would allow Iran to retain even a small nuclear enrichment program. Instead, he imagined (or pretended to believe) that Iran could be compelled to accept “zero enrichment.” Adhering to this position that was advocated by American officials as far back as the George W. Bush administration was precisely what allowed Iran to pursue enrichment in the first place. President Barak Obama had concluded that short of war, the only way to limit or reverse Iran’s enrichment program was to secure a compromise by which nuclear related sanctions were reduced in return for Tehran’s reducing its nuclear stockpile and accepting a robust system of surveillance. Hook (and Trump) rejected this position and on that basis withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018. But in doing so they reopened the door to Iran’s enrichment program that had been curtailed by the JCPOA, thus making it possible for Tehran to increase its leverage when it came to renegotiating any revised nuclear deal. Because the Trump administration’s sanctions-heavy tactics were completely misaligned with its obfuscated or fantastical goals, its Iran strategy played into Tehran’s hands.
Biden Lives with Rather than Cleans Up Trump’s Mess
“Tightening the economic noose around Iran,” a former Trump official stated following Hook’s November 2024 appointment as president-elect Trump’s resurrected point man on Iran, “is going to be a day one foreign policy priority to start cleaning up Biden’s Middle East mess.” Yet this caustic judgment misses the inconvenient reality that Biden’s approach to Iran was largely an extension of Trump’s own policies. Apart from trying to extend the Abraham Accords to Saudi Arabia while ignoring the Palestinian issue—a Trump era policy that collapsed with Hamas’s October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel—the Biden White House imposed new sanctions on Iran and those countries that were skirting earlier American sanctions. The goal was to press Iran to return to the status quo ante before Trump repudiated the JCPOA. But the addition of new sanctions that could not be easily removed not only tied the administration’s hands: they came just as it was contending with Tehran’s hardening terms for reviving the JCPOA. If Ebrahim Raisi’s election as president in June 2021 strengthened the Iranian hardliners, one key if familiar obstacle was the Biden’s administration’s reluctance to take the domestic risk of breaking with a sanctions-heavy Iran policy that was strong on tactics and light on strategy.
Underscoring the long shadow of Trump’s Iran policy, in June 2022, Elliot Abrams—who took over for Hook after his 2020 resignation—assailed the Biden administration for failing to sustain maximum pressure. Without the imposition of more punishing economic sanctions—and their enforcement, he argued, “we will have created a situation where Iran has, in a certain sense, the perfect conditions for continuing to do what it’s been doing, moving toward a weapon.” Yet he did not explain why reviving an enhanced maximum pressure would prove any more effective than those “maximum strength” pain medications that promise more relief than regular strength remedies. Indeed, Abrams did not explain why more sanctions would force Iran to swallow a “compromise” that it always rejected.
Trump’s Gamble Could Prove Costly
If Trump and Hook believe that Iran is any more likely to capitulate now, they are in for a very big headache, one that will very likely come even though Iran, in the wake of the Gaza and Lebanon wars, is under unprecedented military pressure on multiple fronts. Indeed, this very dangerous situation has apparently concentrated the minds of Iran’s leaders, and those of Israel as well. While over the last several months the two countries have come close to the brink, neither seems willing to risk a full-scale war. Instead, both have now acted with some measure of restraint, as their decision to accept a Lebanon ceasefire clearly shows.
But even as Iran has backed diplomacy in the Lebanon-Israel arena, it has not retreated on the nuclear issue and has advanced its enrichment program, thus inducing the International Atomic Energy Agency to censure it for its “undeclared nuclear material” and its “undeclared locations.” Rather than back down, Tehran has responded by promising to activate “new and advanced” centrifuges. This threat exposes a big chink in the maximum pressure armor, namely that more sanctions—and even more robust US military presence in the region—will not stop Iran’s nuclear program. Containment by the United States can and indeed has hurt Iran’s regional allies. But absent sustained diplomacy rooted in a real if difficult compromise, it has not stopped Iran from stockpiling more 60 percent enriched uranium, which can quickly be enriched to 90 percent.
The Trump administration could face mounting pressure to launch an all-out military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Under these dangerous conditions, the incoming Trump administration could face mounting pressure to launch an all-out military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, thus opening the door to a prolonged, full scale regional war. While potentially gaining him praise from some of his voters—not to mention hardline policy makers in Washington—the economic and even military fallout from such a war could deal a blow to Trump’s populist program and credentials, and to his inflated if fragile ego. Hence Elon Musk’s reported November 11 meeting with Iran’s United Nations Ambassador. Whether this was a signal that Tehran should not be too worried about the return of maximum pressure—or worse, about Trump’s unreadiness to negotiate—it is striking that Musk’s meeting induced Trump’s former National Security Advisor John Bolton to warn the new administration against the “fantasy” of a deal.
Iran Could Leverage Maximum Pressure
Whether fantasy or not, the failure to secure a credible diplomatic compromise could lead Iran’s leaders to move with even greater speed to assemble an effective nuclear weapons program. The fundamental reason for doing so would mirror the very impetus that led to Israel’s creation of a nuclear program decades ago, i.e., perceived vulnerability. For Iran, the purpose of creating such a program—if indeed this is what Iran chooses to do—would be to hold in reserve a weapons capacity that it could deploy if and when it faces a nuclear strike. What Tehran wants is precisely what Israel wants: national and state survival.
The problem for Iran, however, is that Israel already has a full complement of nuclear weapons—and thus a first and second-strike capacity—while Iran is still a long way away from making just one bomb that can then be fired at Israel. But once it tries to go down this path, Iran risks a sustained military conflict with Israel and the United States or worse, a possible Israeli first strike. Unless Tehran can suddenly produce multiple nuclear weapons that can hit Israel—in effect a second-strike capacity that will deter an Israeli first-strike—mustering the means to build just one bomb will put Iran in a perilous position. Iran’s leaders are surely well aware of this danger and have every reason to choose a path that avoids it.
Thus when it comes to Iran’s supreme interest, which is regime survival (rather than pursuing a suicidal war with Israel), it is far better to ensure that despite Hezbollah’s significant losses over the past few months in the conflict with Israel, it will remain a potent military force, one that can still launch thousands of missiles at Israel’s urban centers, military facilities, and energy infrastructure. While the recently announced ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel will constrain Hezbollah—at least in the short run—in the longer run, the agreement will not prevent Hezbollah from nursing its wounds while still retaining key parts of its original fire and man power. This is because if Lebanon’s military—which is tasked with enforcing the ceasefire in southern Lebanon—could spark a civil war the moment it tries to use force against Hezbollah. While this still dangerous situation is far from optimal, it is probably acceptable to Iran because in the longer run Hezbollah will still provide a more effective deterrent to an Israeli attack compared to the perils of going down the road to building one nuclear bomb. Thus, in the medium and longer run, the deal that US envoy Amos Hochstein secured with French support is actually good for Iran and Hezbollah. It may also serve the interest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has declared that, “We are currently in a ceasefire, I note, a ceasefire, not the end of the war.”
Iran’s calculation could change if and when its leaders conclude that the entire regional structure of “resistance” stretching from Beirut to Damascus, Baghdad, and Sanaa is falling apart. Indeed, the recent fall of Aleppo to jihadist forces could spark such concerns. But for now, it is more likely that Tehran will rely on damage repair rather than shift to a defense posture that ultimately relies on the dubious choice of building a nuclear weapons program.
This is why Iran has a keen interest in supporting—or at least not opposing—international efforts to end the fighting in Lebanon and perhaps even in Gaza. Indeed, Iran might not oppose a watered- down Israel-Saudi normalization agreement so long as Tehran can sustain a resistance strategy that depends on both the calibrated use and threat of force and on selective diplomacy to engage its regional neighbors, including Saudi Arabia. It is not Iran that is the real obstacle to such a deal, but rather Israel’s nationalist hardliners. They may yet scuttle an Israeli-Saudi deal, no matter how hard Trump tries to sell it, even as he gives an implicit green light to the Netanyahu government’s violent campaign to annex most of the West Bank. Trump might pull off this particular hat trick. But by inadvertently helping Iran to defend its vital interests, the glaring infirmities of a maximum pressure policy that is all tactics, but short on strategy could work to Iran’s advantage.
On this score, it is worth noting that the incoming National Security Advisor, Congressman Mike Waltz (R-FL), celebrated the virtues of maximum pressure in a National Interest article that he co-authored with none other than Khodorkovsky back in May 2021. While it is very unlikely that Khodorkovsky will join the new administration, Waltz will surely find that reviving an approach that repeatedly failed could quickly bring back the Iran policy mess that Hook, and Trump, bequeathed to Biden and all future US presidents. While Hook insists that the purpose of a revived maximum pressure strategy is not regime change, its ultimate goal remains unclear, as do the means that presumably will be used to achieve whatever Trump and company have in mind.
The views expressed in this publication are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab Center Washington DC, its staff, or its Board of Directors.
Featured image credit: Khamenei.ir
